Reading
Reading is not only the key which opens the doors to other subjects, it also informs, guides and enriches all our daily lives. Here at John Fletcher of Madeley we aim to instil a love of books and reading into all our pupils. This is achieved through the daily teaching of phonics, individual and class reading sessions and we are also currently investing to surround the children with positive reading experiences which don’t always require them to sit at a table in the classroom.
Our principle aims – from the National Curriculum in England – for Reading are to:
- put reading at the heart of the curriculum.
- inspire pupils to develop a ‘lifelong love of reading’
- ensure that pupils develop fluency to confidently read at speed (90 words per minute).
- provide pupils with the ability to understand what they have read and use that information for a given purpose.
We are aspiring to put reading at the heart of our curriculum, as without being able to read effectively, children cannot access the rest of the curriculum well.
For EYFS and KS1, we have begun to provide the Read Write Inc programme for reading. This is systematic and progressive. Children in KS2 who are not yet secure with phonics access this programme too.
Once children have completed the programme, we offer daily reading lessons. This incorporates teacher modelling of reading; opportunities for children to read and re-read passages in pairs to develop fluency, and a discovery of new vocabulary. Children articulate what they now know from the text, what they are still unsure of, and make predictions as to what may happen next. They then learn how to answer a range of comprehension questions, including retrieval, inference, explaining and summarising passages.
Every class enjoys a book for pleasure daily with the class teacher. This may or may not be linked to their topics.
We have our ‘Book Corners’ in each classroom, stocked with age appropriate fiction and non-fiction texts, comics and magazines. These have proved immensely popular with our children.