Reading

Reading at Ratby

At Ratby Primary School we aim to provide high quality teaching and learning experiences to enable the children to become skilled and fluent readers.  We strive to make reading engaging and exciting to promote reading for pleasure.

Each child learns to read at their own pace and in their own way. We adapt our teaching to make sure every child is making the best possible progress. We provide additional support for children needing it through Reading and Phonics interventions

Reading in Class

Teachers read regularly to the children through modelled reading, shared stories, poems and information books. Teachers and children really enjoy sharing books and listening to stories, which provides opportunities to visualise, develop their imagination and to learn new vocabulary.

We have daily Guided Reading and or Whole Class Reading sessions in all classes and our teachers record our progress as we read. We also have home school diaries and we, our teachers and our parents write comments to each other about how well we are doing.  We have lots of books to choose from within our Guided Reading schemes.  At Ratby Primary School we use Rigby Star, Phonic Bugs, Project X and Rapid Readers.  We also take a choice book which we can choose from our reading areas or the library.

Across a half term we ensure children have the opportunity to read a range of genres and develop the reading skills in a number of areas. Below is a typical plan for the half term

Reading Skills

At Ratby we use the Literacy Shed Reading Vipers to develop the key skills. Below you can download further information on the VIPERS.

VIPERS is based on 6 key reading/comprehension skills:

1. Vocabulary
2. Inference
3. Prediction
4. Explanation
5. Retrieval
6. Sequence/Summarise

 

Ks2 reading vipers

Ks1 reading vipers

Performance Poetry

A performance poetry competition is held once a term. There are 3 categories:

• EYFS
• KS1
• Key Stage 2

Each term the pupils in each class work together to learn a new poem to perform to the rest of the phase and our judges. The judging panel is made up of the Headteacher and members of the Governing Body who judge each performance, taking into account: entertainment, clarity of voices, togetherness, choreography, props and resources. Each term the winning class receive the Performance Poetry Cup.

Library

We visit our fantastic library regularly to choose books that we enjoy.  There are a range of fantastic fiction and non-fiction books to choose from.  Every class is allocated a time to visit the library each week to read or choose their own free choice books.

We have Year 6 Librarians to help in the library they run a ‘Reading Buddies’ lunchtime club every Monday lunchtime.  The older children read with younger children and help them to apply all of the strategies they are learning to read unknown words by segmenting and blending.

The older children teach the younger children to talk about the text and the illustrations and ask questions to see if the younger children understand what they are reading. This helps to develop everyone’s reading confidence!  At the end of a session one of the Year 6 librarians will finish with a story to the younger children.

Reading for Pleasure

We have reading corners in every classroom. We can choose books to read and we change the books regularly to take home. We also have a book swap box so that we can bring books from home to swap with our friends.

We strive to make reading fun and enjoyable for everyone through reading competitions and challenges. Please click on the picture above to view the range of reading challenges and competitions we have been taking part in.

Teachers as Readers

Each day there is a dedicated time for teachers to read to the pupils. We believe it is essential for teachers to act as role models and to inspire pupils to read and promote a love of reading. In the younger years this may involve sharing a picture book with the children, whilst in the older years a class novel may be shared over several weeks. Teachers select the highest quality texts, taking inspiration from Pie Corbett’s Story Spines and Page Turner recommendations as well as their own knowledge of the best children’s authors.

We enjoy using our reading skills in every lesson and our teachers provide opportunities for us to do so in all subjects.  In every classroom there is a book corner filled with books to support our curriculum for us to enjoy.

100 Recommended Reads

We published a list of 100 books for each phase which we believe each child should read. This will encourage pupils to read a wide breadth of genre types and genres which is essential for developing their reading skills including comprehension, inference, deduction, summarising and predictions.

 

100 Book List Challenge For EYFS

100 Book List Challenge For KS1

100 Book List Challenge For Y3 / 4

100 Book List Challenge For Y5 / 6