Reading
Intent
The Reading Ethos
Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum at Marnel Junior School. We believe that reading opens the door to the wider curriculum and in turn the world. A love of reading goes hand in hand with a love of learning. We aim to inspire children to become lifelong readers and therefore lifelong learners and we believe reading is key to academic success. We promote enjoyment through the creative use of high-quality texts and a range of engaging activities.
Quality Texts
Teachers aim to build this inner world for the children at Marnel Junior school. We all aim to be excellent reading role models in the way that they discuss and promote books as well as modelling reading for pleasure. Our school reading curriculum is designed for children to experience a diverse breadth of texts, chosen to inspire and excite. The books on the reading spine are specifically chosen to enable children to think critically about world issues and the reading curriculum is designed to support children voice an opinion; becoming more personally aware. This varied diet of texts incorporates PSHE themes, classics, new authors, books that support cross curricular links and characters that promote ethnic diversity (EDI.)
Pie Corbett says…
“Great books build the imagination. The more we read aloud expressively, and the more children are able to savour, discuss and reinterpret literature through the arts, the more memorable the characters, places and events become, building an inner world. A child who is read to will have an inner kingdom of unicorns, talking spiders and a knife that cuts into other worlds. The mind is like a ‘tardis’; it may seem small but inside there are many mansions. Each great book develops the imagination and equips the reader with language.”
Implementation
The Reading Workshop
Our Reading Curriculum aims:
- To promote reading for pleasure.
- To promote confidence and positive attitudes to reading through access to a wide range of literature.
- To broaden children’s vocabulary.
- To develop fluency teaching children to read accurately, develop automaticity and prosody.
- To develop comprehension skills and enable children to analyse what they read
- To promote discussion and sharing of personal opinions.
- To support those children who require additional support with their reading with a range of strategies to remove barriers to learning.
Quality First Teaching
“Why reading matters I realized in a whiplash burst that those children, all mine for one year, might never reach their full potential as human beings if they never learned to read”
Maryanne Wolf’s sudden awareness, as a new teacher, of her responsibilities towards her young class highlights why reading matters. To the individual, it matters emotionally, culturally, and educationally; because of the economic impacts within society, it matters to everyone.”
At Marnel Junior School we have an embedded skills-based reading curriculum that coupled with our cultural capital opportunities for reading enables children to learn to read with confidence, fluency and understanding and enjoyment, providing them with the skills required to achieve high academic success throughout the whole of their education.
The Reading Workshop is timetabled every day and encourages the children to read in school independently, in guided groups, with reading learning partners, and as a shared whole class session. Each day focuses on a different reading skill, while using the same text. This allows children to practise and engage with the same text but on different levels. Skills include, text marking, select and retrieve, inference, clarification of vocabulary and personal responses to texts. The lessons are lively and full of discussion as the children listen to adults and other children read and talk about the text.
Equal Opportunities and Access to Quality Texts
MyOn Digital Library Aims
- To encourage good home/school reading partnerships.
- To provide all children with books that are tailored to their needs and ability
- To provide consistency for the child.
MyOn is personalized digital library that is student-centred. It provides children with a personalised literacy environment that gives students access to more than 6,000 enhanced digital books. Titles are dynamically matched to each individual student’s interests, year and are linked to the Star Assessment reading level. Combined with a suite of close reading tools and embedded supports, myON Reader fosters student engagement and achievement.
Accelerated Reader
Pupils read books, take online quizzes, and receives immediate feedback. Students respond to regular feedback and are motivated to make progress with their reading skills.
In addition to this, Accelerated Reader gives teachers the information they need to monitor students’ reading practice and make informed decisions to guide their future learning.
Accelerated Reader provides a comprehensive set of reports reveals how much a student has been reading, at what level of complexity, and how well they have understood what they have read. Vocabulary growth and literacy skills are also measured, giving teachers insight into how well students have responded to reading schemes and class instruction.
Interventions and SEN Support
Pupils who fail to learn to read early on start to dislike reading. At Marnel Junior School there is an emphasises on pupils needing to keep up with their peers rather than be helped to catch up later, at a point when learning in the wider curriculum depends so much on literacy. Where pupils make insufficient progress, extra efforts are made to provide them with extra practice and support from the beginning. We believe that no child should be left behind or become a disengaged reader so targeted interventions are imperative in removing barriers so a love of literature my flourish.
AI within the Reading Curriculum
At our school, we are excited to embrace the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance our primary reading curriculum. AI offers innovative tools that make learning more engaging, personalised, and effective for our students. Here are two ways we are integrating AI to reflect the needs of the 21st century:
Personalised Learning: AI can help us tailor reading materials to each student’s individual needs and interests. By analysing reading patterns and comprehension levels, AI can recommend books and activities that match each child’s interests and abilities, ensuring they stay motivated and challenged.
Data-Driven Insights: AI allows us to track and analyse student progress more effectively (Accelerated Reader). With detailed reports on reading habits and performance, teachers can identify areas where students may need extra help and adjust their teaching strategies accordingly. This ensures that every child receives the support they need to succeed.
By integrating AI into our reading curriculum, we are preparing our students for a future where technology and literacy go hand in hand. We are committed to providing a modern, dynamic education that equips our children with the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century.
Phonics
At Marnel Junior School we use the Little Wandle Rapid catch-up programme to support our children who have not yet reached age related expectations by the end of Y2. Although most children when they arrive at Marnel Junior School have mastered the knowledge of phonics some still need structured teaching in order make accelerated progress.
Little Wandle is used at feeder schools and by adopting this intervention it has allowed a familiar and consistent transition between schools. The Rapid Catch-up programme (designed as a KS2 intervention) focuses on the phonics skills the pupils have already been exposed to in KS1 using age-appropriate texts which continues to help embed decoding, improve fluency and support comprehension skills.
Over the past two years we have developed this intervention; teachers and teaching assistants have received training in the systematic phonics and continuous CPD happens to ensure staffs confidence and understanding.
Fluency within out Reading Curriculum
Our reading curriculum is designed with a strong focus on developing fluency, which is essential for reading success. Our intent is to promote accuracy in reading by building and practicing phonological knowledge. We aim to develop automaticity, where children’s reading flows smoothly, and prosody, where their reading closely resembles natural spoken language. Within our reading workshops, we employ various strategies such as choral reading, echo reading, and paired reading. We believe that “mileage matters” – the more children read, the more fluent they become. To support this, we actively teach fluency strategies in small groups, where teacher modelling and reading “theatre” are key components. This approach ensures that every child has the opportunity to become a confident and expressive reader.
Supporting SEN Students in Their Reading Journey
At our school, we firmly believe that every child has the right to learn to read, regardless of their starting point. We are committed to supporting students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) at every stage of their reading journey. Our approach involves targeting children with specific interventions, carefully measuring and reviewing the impact to ensure accelerated progress. We maintain the same high expectations for all our students and strive to find ways for our struggling readers to access our rich and diverse texts. Our focus is on removing barriers to learning, ensuring that every child can experience the joy and empowerment that comes from reading. Through dedicated support and tailored strategies, we aim to create an inclusive environment where all students can thrive and achieve their full potential.
Rapid Reading
Rapid reading is a complete reading intervention designed to support pupils’ fluency, pace and stamina in reading. The texts combine colourful characters, dyslexia-friendly fonts, and helps each student take the small but important steps they need to make progress in reading.
Widget text
Decoding may be a barrier to reading for some children, but by using a widget text, a child who struggle to decode can use the symbols and pictures to help them read a text they otherwise might not be able to access. This allows them to engage with the text discuss it with their peers and exposes them to vocabulary and content they may not come across otherwise.
Daily Readers and Group Readers
Practise makes perfect. It is important that children have regular opportunities to practice the skills taught within the reading curriculum and any interventions they are receiving. Children who need to improve an area of reading are identified by teachers and listened to read either on a 1:1 basis or as part of a small group by either a class teacher or an LSA.
Tutoring
Once children have mastered the decoding and are reading fluently it is sometimes necessary for these children to focus on their comprehension skills. Targeted groups of children in UKS2 are given the opportunity to work with a specially employed tutor to develop their comprehension skills. By building the pace and fluency of reading coupled with the growing confidence and independence, these reading skills become transferable in the reading workshop and across the whole curriculum.
Assessments
To monitor each child’s progress using a range of assessment strategies
Teachers and LSAs consistently make on-going reading observations everyday giving verbal feedback to children and supporting them in their learning.
Star Reading Assessments happen every 6 weeks across the school and gives teachers feedback specific to the individual child. This provides a reading age, updates the child ZPD which feeds into their MyOn library choices, so books are always relevant and at the appropriate challenge. Books in the library are also labelled with a ZPD so children can choose books with confidence.
Every term during Assessment Week, children will sit a Reading NFER Test which provides data for class teachers and identifies areas for whole school development. This then informs future planning, moving children on in their learning.
For those children who are on a reading interventions baseline assessments are done at the beginning of an intervention to ensure the pitch is correct and then after a six-week period another assessment will take place to measure the rapid progress and evaluate the next steps for that child.
Culture Capital Opportunities
The School Library
We have an excellent library and a wide range of reading books in every classroom. All children are encouraged to choose their own reading book to take home to share with parents and this reading book is changed frequently. All the children have access to a wide range of genres and themes of books exposing them to various authors and writing styles reflecting our drive to broaden their horizons, experiences, and aspirations.
Children are encouraged and – where necessary – supported, to become independent in their book choices and use of the school library. With the help of their ZPD, choosing books in their readability range (books labelled with a ZPD) allows them to independently choose books that are appropriate to their reading age and gives them a zone to be able to challenge themselves, while achieving optimal growth in reading skills. Teachers and support staff will oversee and ensure that each child is adequately supported and challenged at their appropriate level when choosing their own book from the library.
Hampshire School Library Service
Marnel Junior school works very closely in partnership with the Hampshire School Library Service to make sure the quality of the texts we have in our library are current and relevant to the children in our school and their education.
Services include:
- Training and support on how to run an effective library
- Training for pupil librarians
- Book awards
- Virtual Meet the Author webinars
- Book lists and resources
- A regular stock check and library maintenance
- Enriching the wider curriculum by supplying supporting and engaging texts
Reading Reward Challenge
Read every day to earn a point and turn your points into prizes. The reading challenge is designed to reward the children who regularly read at home and in school. Children receive their first badge once they have read 50 times! These high expectations help promote children becoming habitual reads and promotes self-esteem as they wear their badges with pride. It gives them an opportunity to work towards a goal and talk about their achievements.
Reading for Pleasure
Teachers are the best people to promote a love of reading because children, particularly young children, care what their teachers think about the stories they read aloud. It is important to our staff that children are read to and priorities a daily timeslot where children can enjoy being read to. This not only allows them to encounter more demanding texts in a safe environment but also aids their vocabulary growth. All classrooms have a reading corner where there are a variety of high-quality texts that are regularly refreshed with the support of the SLS.
Impact
The Marnel pupil sees the value of reading and recognises that reading is the key to unlocking future opportunities. The Marnel pupil has high aspirations and can achieve their goals because they have received a high-quality reading curriculum that has challenged and engaged them; leaving them with a thirst for knowledge and an understanding that reading is key to this. By the time the Marnel Pupil leaves Y6 they will not only be a competent reader, but they will love and appreciate literature and understand and how reading enriches their lives.
