Reading

We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Progressions’, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. Teachers model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team.

We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’.

These include:

• sharing high-quality stories and poems.
• learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
• activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
• attention to high-quality language.

We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. At the end of each week, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.

Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins as soon as all children have started school.

We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds expectations of progress:

• Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
• Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Any child who needs additional practice has daily keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.

We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2-6 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach these using the Catch-up resources – at pace.

We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week.

• These are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children
• use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids
• are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.

• Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:
  • decoding
  • prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
  • comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

• In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.
• In Year 2 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.
• Children in Years 2 and 3 whose phonics are secure but who have not yet developed sufficient fluency to read and understand age-appropriate texts are given extra support in small reading fluency groups. They are taught using the Big Cat for Little Wandle fluency resources.

The decodable reading practice book is assigned to individual children on Google Classroom to ensure success is shared with the family.

Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.

We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.

Children in Reception and Year 1 who are receiving additional phonics Keep-up sessions read their reading practice book to an adult daily.

• Every teacher in our school has been trained to teach reading, so we have the same expectations of progress. We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load.
• Weekly content grids map each element of new learning to each day, week and term for the duration of the programme.
• Lesson templates, Prompt cards and How to videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.
• The Reading Leader and SLT use the Audit and Prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

Regular assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

Assessment for learning is used:

• daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

Summative assessment is used:

• every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
• by SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

• Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.

Children in Year 2 to 6 are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.

We develop children’s reading fluency by engaging them with a wide variety of reading across the school curriculum. In addition to this, in weekly reading fluency lessons, children are explicitly taught how to read for understanding and how to read aloud with confidence.

‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010).

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

• We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including those that reflect the children at Highgate Primary School and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
• Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
• In Nursery/Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.
• In Reception and Year 1, children are assigned a reading book on Google Classroom each week to share with their families
• From the latter half of Year 2 to Year 6, teachers make opportunities for children to discuss in class the books they are reading as part of the Reading Adventure programme (see below).
• Each class visits the school library once a week and children borrow books to take home and read for pleasure.
• Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of books. Each year group embarks on a shared Reading Adventure in September, with children working their way through a carefully selected reading list designed to appeal to their age and ability. Children also attend regular reading for pleasure events including book fairs, author workshops and Biblio Buzz (the Haringey Children’s Book Awards).

In reading comprehension lessons, we explore a wide variety of texts, teaching children how to read for understanding across a range of genres. Children learn how to analyse and evaluate, make inferences, summarise key information, and use context clues to understand new vocabulary. Through discussion and practice, children learn how to identify main ideas, understand how language and structure contribute to meaning, and discuss their opinions with evidence from the text. Teachers draw upon a range of resources including the Rising Stars Cracking Comprehension scheme and a set of graded texts designed to support children in the development of inference skills.

We track and analyse all children’s progress in reading fluency and comprehension on an ongoing basis through regular formative and summative assessment. A range of tailored interventions are arranged for children who need extra support. These additional sessions may be 1-1 with a teaching assistant or one of our volunteer Better Reading Partners, or in small, guided groups.