At Woodthorpe, we are committed to developing a love for reading and instilling a culture of reading for pleasure across our entire school community.  We work hard to promote reading around school and enjoying sharing class texts together.

Our school library contains a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts for all children to enjoy. Our ‘KS1 reading scheme’ books are made up of decodable books from a range of sources, including Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Bug Club and Big Cat Phonics. All these books at Woodthorpe are carefully banded to ensure books are matched to pupil’s current reading level. Our ‘KS2 reading scheme’ uses Renaissance Reading for assessment and books are organised into ZPD’s (Zones of Proximal Development).

We feel strongly that everyone should have the opportunity to read books that they enjoy. We believe that regardless of which coloured book band or ZPD a pupil is working within, there are also opportunities for children to read a book for pleasure and engage in the wider range of texts although these texts might not be as closely matched to their ability.

Intent

The children at Woodthorpe will be provided with a reading curriculum offer designed to:

• Establish an exciting, inspiring and engaging reading culture across school.
• Instil a love of reading and reading for pleasure across the school community.
• Reading will be ‘right from the start’, through high quality phonics teaching and provision.
• Equip children with a range of techniques to support comprehension and questioning of key information.
• Support children to read regularly.
• Allow children to access and read a significant range of high quality texts, including fiction and non-fiction, in a well organised and carefully planned system.
• Engage all children to read exciting and suitable texts by ensuring a range of texts are on offer to all children, including high quality phonetically decodable books and low level, high interest examples.
• Inspire and scaffold all staff to become reading experts.
• Provide children with language and vocabulary to support them to articulate their thoughts, ideas and opinions about texts they have read.

Implementation

We are proud to provide an exciting and varied reading diet for the children of Woodthorpe to ensure that the statement of intent for the curriculum is positively and successfully implemented across school. The implementation of reading at Woodthorpe includes:

• Well planned and highly focused whole year group guided reading sessions.
• Individual reading sessions (one to one)
• Daily phonics sessions across the Early Years Foundation Stage and into Key Stage One.  Little Wandle Letters and Sounds is used for the teaching of phonics.
• Support and individual sessions are delivered to those children elsewhere in school who may continue to require additional support.
• Supporting all stakeholders to read regularly, through monitoring of our school reading challenge.
• Tasks designed to promote reading for pleasure.
• Ongoing, high quality and targeted staff training and development.

Impact

The impact of our reading curriculum is that children leave Woodthorpe Primary School having had the opportunity to engage within a wide range of texts and reading experiences and with the sckills necessary for their next stage within education.

Current data benchmarking indicates that pupils are out performing their national peers in the vast majority of age groups, this includes EYFS, phonics screening checks, KS1 & KS2 assessments (NCER National 2021). 

A raised profile of reading across the school reflects the children’s enjoyment of the subject as well as their progress throughout the year. Guided reading books and the school website show a range of activities which the children complete and reflects the different reading activities the children may have completed. 

The school website also reflects whole school events where we immerse the children in reading activities, for example World Book Day, paired reading and library visits.

Assessment

We measure reading outcomes in a timely manner throughout the year, planning bespoke next steps and ensuring that all children are suitably challenged and supported to meet them.

To inform our assessments in KS2 we use a standardised online tool from GL Assessments and Star Reading. These are used each half term and allow us to track pupils progress. In KS1, teachers continuously assess the children throughout guided reading and individual reading sessions. In Year 2, children also complete Key Stage assessments.

Following each assessment cycle, children are identified who may need  further support. They are then supported in intervention groups focusing on specific skills which they find challenging.  

Little Wandle assessments are used in phonics each half term to track and closely monitor children’s attainment and progress.