Our Vision

“A child that loves reading has everything within their reach.” – William Godwin

 

At The Weald we endeavour to instill in children a passion for reading. We wish to teach children to be enthusiastic readers who read fluently and widely. A reader at The Weald uses and develops their phonological knowledge to read words with increased fluency. They have good understanding of texts they read and take an active approach to reading. They can visualise, ask questions, repair any break down of meaning and use different strategies to infer. We recognise that children need to develop decoding and fluency skills in order that they can read confidently. At the same time, we will develop a love of the written word and understand that reading and writing skills go hand in hand. We want children to read for pleasure and enjoy listening to stories, accessing a wide range of text types, genres and authors, allowing them to make informed opinions about their favourites. We recognise that confident reading is an essential skill for everyone, enabling you to continue life-long learning in all subjects and in walks of life, as shown in the ‘Reading Cycle’.

 

How we plan and teacher for being an Author (reader)

At the Weald we are passionate about developing a love of reading and so many activities each week are in place to promote this:

•     Boys and Girls Reading Club

•     Guided Reading text linked to enquiry

•     Reading Challenge

•     Allocated library time each week

•     Author visits

•     Reading Buddies

•     PAT dog reading (with a selective few every half term, could be children 'below' or needing        more confidence)

•     Reading laptop software

 

Reading across the curriculum at The Weald  

At The Weald, we recognise that reading is a key skill for learning and therefore it is transferable across the curriculum.

In the daily reading lesson: Children practice the key skills of decoding and comprehension in the daily phonics or reading lessons. They use a range of quality texts which may be linked to the curriculum enquiry or may have been selected for the themes which they explore.

 

In the daily writing lesson 

In the daily writing lesson, children read a text which has been selected to support the learning not just as a model for writing, but also to expand their knowledge of themes and subjects being taught in the enquiry curriculum (see 'Texts used to support writing' below). We teach children that to become a good author, you must first become a good reader.

 

In enquiry lessons 

Teaching across the wider curriculum, but particularly in enquiries, which are led by Science, History or Geography, children are encouraged to read about a subject, concept or theme. This might be reading and interpreting maps, charts or information in a good-quality atlas, reading about an event in history or reading information or instructions about a scientific process or experiment.

 

How we evaluate our learning as Authors (readers)

The school formally assesses fluency three times per year across all classes, using the school’s own colour banding system (For specific children this may need to be assessed more frequently). This is done by hearing a child read a 100-word extract from a book which is a level above the band they are currently reading within. The child will need to read with 95% accuracy (roughly 95/100 words) and with sufficient pace to maintain meaning. Below 95% accuracy, a child will not be in a position to comprehend the text. Children will also be expected to pass a comprehension exercise (80% correctly) to move on to the next band.

Teachers or Learning Support Assistants will hear all children read as part of their reading lessons, but will also hear individual children read three times per week if they are behind their peers and at risk of not becoming fluent readers. We would expect children to be using other taught fluency skills in addition to decoding e.g. self-correction, contextual clues etc.

Teachers make assessment judgements during every reading lesson to gauge how pupils are accessing their learning. They then amend lessons accordingly to ensure children progress through the Reading Curriculum.

In addition to benchmarking, children are assessed three times a year using NFER/ SATS papers. We triangulate this assessment data with the benchmarking and class teacher assessment, based upon one-to-one reading and how the child is working within whole class guided reading sessions to provide an end of term judgement towards the child meeting the end of year expectations.

Supporting your author (reader) at home

Bitesize Comprehension