“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Dr Seuss

"Reading is a passport to countless adventures."

Mary Pope Osborne

Reading Intent

At Bevois Town Primary School, it is our intention that every child will ‘be a reader.’ From the start of their journey with us, children are supported to develop a love of reading and to see themselves as readers. For a Bevois Town pupil, developing speaking, listening and vocabulary skills, is fundamental to their success. We believe that is important to not set a limit on what we think our children can do; we aim to instil and nurture the belief that all children can reach their full potential and we want them to succeed. We have high aspirations for our pupils and we expect children to have high expectations of themselves as well. Reading and listening to high quality texts provides children with a wealth of wider knowledge, understanding of the world, it develops vocabulary, and improves writing. We want to enable all children to find authors they love and provide them with the necessary life-long skills they need to ensure they can read confidently with a secure understanding.

Our core goals for developing readers at Bevois Town are:

• To expose our pupils to a range of ambitious and challenging texts, from a broad range of authors, voices and cultures addressing the curriculum and the culture of our school.
• To provide our pupils with regular opportunities to read aloud and discuss books at their phonic level and above to improve their reading fluency and foster a culture of ‘book talk’
• To purposely and precisely teach meaningful vocabulary explicitly to broaden our pupil’s vocabulary and understanding of language
• To read and embed high quality fiction and non-fiction in our reading teaching to develop our pupil’s background knowledge and understanding of the world, locally and beyond, providing them with key knowledge to support their understanding of texts and topics in our curriculum.
• For our children to identify as readers, understand the importance of reading linked to their future success and foster a genuine love of reading.

In order to enable our pupils to reach their potential in Reading, our curriculum has been carefully planned to embed and enhance the skills and knowledge of our children each year following the key 'golden threads' of Reading.

Early Reading and Phonics

Through a consistent and rigorous approach to the teaching of phonics, we aim to provide the children with the skills they need in order to read confidently, fluently and with understanding, enabling them to access information throughout the curriculum to ensure they reach their potential. 

We develop phonic skills through a systematic approach, in daily lessons, which are adapted according to children’s phonics awareness and development. We follow the approved SSP program of 'Bug Club' to support children’s sound production and memory. At Bevois Town, we teach sounds in an order that has been carefully planned to match the key texts and writing outcomes over the year. The children are taught skills such as blending (putting sounds together to read words) and segmenting (breaking words down to spell them). Our sessions are interactive, pacey, lasting no more than 30 minutes and follow the structure: revisit, teach, practise and apply.

The planned teaching and progression of phonics skills are shown below including an example of a word for each sound.  At Bevois Town we use the cycle: assess, plan, and teach to ensure the phonics provision is appropriate for each individual.  Every cohort of children is different; therefore the progression of phonics is flexible and can be adapted by class teachers with support from the Literacy Leader and Phase Leaders, as and when it is needed.

Tricky Words

To enable the children to become fluent readers, they are taught to sight read ‘tricky words’. These are words that cannot be sounded out, such as ‘the’ or ‘said’. The children are taught to use the letter names when learning to read and write these words.  ‘Tricky words' are taught within phonics and literacy lessons and are planned to match the key text and/or writing outcome.  They are displayed and prompts are always available in classrooms.

Rich, High Quality Texts

At Bevois Town, we believe that our curriculum gives the children the opportunity to access varied and challenging texts which reflect our whole school curriculum ‘HEART’ values. Stories, poetry and non-fiction texts are carefully selected to ensure children encounter literature from a rich variety of genres, authors, times, cultures and places, and which build their cultural capital. These have been mapped to match and enhance wider curriculum learning, with opportunities woven in for children to build on prior learning and revisit ideas from a new perspective, enabling deeper learning. We have ensured texts include concepts and characters relevant to our children as well as unlocking new ideas. Texts are deliberately  chosen which challenge stereotypes and are empowering in their message.

Reading

Children encounter reading through a variety of platforms: 1:1 Reading; Guided Reading; Reading for Pleasure; Read aloud; and Reading across the Curriculum.

Guided Reading

We have a strategic approach to Guided Reading and the teaching of comprehension skills. In EYFS and KS1, texts are carefully chosen to promote challenge and progression. The staff are confident in tailoring support appropriately for the individual child.  In EYFS and Year One Guided Reading focuses on applying the phonics recently taught and the quick application of phonics supports the children in laying down secure schemas. 

In KS2, Guided Reading is taught through the use of high-quality modern and classic texts as well as the full range of reading genres and text types, e.g. letters, diaries, leaflets. The sessions are adapted to meet children’s needs and cover all the reading skills outlined in the National Curriculum, including a focus on: retrieval; inference; summarising; prediction; word meaning; analysing authors’ use of word choice; analysing authors’ bias; identifying text types and organisational features; and comparing and contrasting texts.  

Reading for Pleasure

In KS2, children are provided with planned opportunities to read for pleasure throughout the school week. These texts are chosen from class book corners and Key Stage libraries, and are used as part of the home-school reading system.  Within the classrooms, the children have access to high quality literature ranging from classics including traditional tales, to picture books and contemporary authors; such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Malorie Blackman, Elizabeth Laird and Beverly Naidoo.

In KS1 children are allowed to take a book home from the class library to share with their family, these are often the key texts that the children have been taught during topic or literacy lessons, enabling them to revisit and embed their learning.

In addition to the wide range of “real” books that children, across the school, have available to them, all pupils also have access to the online platform, Bug Club, where the books are allocated by the class teacher, ensuring that they closely match the reading level of the child. 

Read Aloud

Every class is read to each day by their teacher. We believe this is vital, quality time to imbue children with a love and enjoyment of reading and stories. It also affords teachers with an important opportunity to model the prosody of language.

Reading Across the Curriculum

At Bevois Town, we capitalise upon all opportunities to foster reading skills and expand vocabulary knowledge within our pupils. The reading of texts as a means to access the curriculum is used in all subjects, including (but not exclusive to) the reading of Maths word problems; research texts in History and explanatory texts in Science.

Narrowing the Vocabulary Gap  

Vocabulary is the golden thread of not only English but our whole school curriculum. There has been a wealth of educational research over recent years regarding the gap in vocabulary experienced by many children: this particularly affects children from lower income families and those with English as an additional language (Mandy J. Maguire, et. Al 2018). Research suggests that the challenges start early on in a child’s development and that by the age of three, there is a 30-million-word gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families. A study by Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder 2013 showed that the vocabulary gap is evident in toddlers: by 18 months, children in different socio-economic groups display dramatic differences in their vocabularies. Even at two years of age, the disparity in vocabulary development is significant. By the time children arrive in our schools, they are already at a disadvantage. We have a concerted and consistent approach to enriching and expanding all pupils’ vocabulary across every area of the curriculum.

Vocabulary is developed through:

• Explicit vocabulary teaching, using a tiered approach
• Incidental vocabulary learning
• Cultivating ‘word consciousness’
• Language rich classrooms
• Pre-teaching key vocabulary 

Thus enabling our pupils to make rich connections to build their vocabulary schema as they progress through the school which in turn supports them in accessing the whole curriculum.

Enrichment in English

A love of reading is further enhanced through related role play, songs, and cross curricular immersive learning. Enrichment opportunities and real-life hands-on experiences add to the children’s engagement and understanding, often providing a purpose for their writing.