Reading and Phonics

Intent

At BHJS we understand the importance of encouraging a love for reading, after all it underpins everything we do every day of our lives. We desire for every child within our school to develop a love of reading; a good knowledge of a range of authors, genres and text-types; and, to be able to understand more about the world in which they live through the knowledge they gain from texts. These texts should encompass the best that has been thought and written. We intend to design, and continuously improve upon, a curriculum that builds on the foundations laid within the early years and infants schooling to provide children with the fluency of decoding and comprehension skills required to understand and analyse texts. In doing so, we aim to address the ‘5 Plagues of Reading’ so that every child can successfully access every subject in the secondary curriculum before continuing their journey beyond to college, university and life-long learning.

We do not put ceilings on what pupils can achieve in reading and we do not hold pre-conceptions about any pupils’ ability to make progress: all children are expected to meet national standards and we intend to put in place targeted support to ensure that they do. Furthermore, we understand the importance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop positive reading habits, decoding and comprehension skills. This can be achieved by encouraging home-school partnerships which enable parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills being taught in school through good quality and breadth of texts.

Finally, we intend for our curriculum to represent the diversity of our pupils and the wider world through book corners, a school library and studied texts that represent all genders, races, religions, differing world views and that challenge stereotypes. By doing so, we hope to remove all limitations on children’s aspirations and develop responsible citizens who contribute positively to a tolerant, cohesive and prosperous future society.

Why is reading so important?

Developing a reading habit is perceived as helping students to get better at reading. Teresa Cremin et al (2014) suggest that the acquisition of the habit of reading is helped when teachers build communities of readers in their classrooms, developing a love of reading and the motivation to do so – building both the will and the skill. Likewise, Jerrim and Moss (2018) argue that reading fiction is a predictor of long-term academic success. ‘ EEF Blog: Reading aloud with your class – what does the research say? The Government’s Reading Framework (June 2021) further emphasises the fundamental importance of reading to all learning and pupils later well-being and socio-economic success.

Implementation

In order to achieve this we aspire to share as adults our own love of reading with our classes. We encourage the children to read a wide-range of authors and genres (including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, classics etc…) through which they are immersed into new worlds through challenging texts that represent our diverse school and world community, challenge stereotypes and deepen the topics studied in the wider curriculum. See the ‘Class Books Overview’ and ‘Whole Class Reading Termly Overviews’ for each year group to see how this has been mapped out across the school.

Phonics & Fluency of Decoding

Before being able to successfully access whole class reading sessions, some pupils, predominantly in Year 3, may require differentiated and/or additional provision to accelerate progress toward age-related expectations for fluency in phonics and decoding. This may be due to SEN, EAL, PP or other individual needs.

Read Write Inc Phonics Scheme is continued into Year 3 from where children have ended in the infants. Careful assessment at the end of Year 2 and start of Year 3 identifies the children who require additional support separate to whole class provision; these pupils will work 1:1 or in groups at their assessed RWI set level of texts. Prior systematic, synthetic phonics learning will be activated and built upon using consistent language and teaching strategies whilst progressing children onto Year 3 level reading books and spellings.

Daily Precision Grids are also used for some pupils, particularly those for whom phonics alone does not achieve the best results, where appropriate support is individualised to focus on a few common exception words that a child has yet to acquire the fluency of sight word-recognition needed to access them.

Nessy Phonics, Reading & Spelling (x3 weekly) may be used as additional provision at home and in class for those pupils with specific learning needs for whom it will benefit.

Other Interventions

Read to Succeed focuses on Language & Comprehension to close the vocabulary gap (Alex Quigley, 2018) and develop strategies for fluency, comprehension (focusing on the VIPERS skills) and reading for pleasure. Children are selected from those who are working towards expected standards in their summative tests.

1:1 Reading is done by teachers weekly for all pupils who access an intervention and fortnightly for every pupil in the class: teachers keep a record of this. Additional 1:1 reading is provided by trained TAs for pupils working towards standards as well as others for whom it is deemed beneficial (PP, EAL etc.) This is to ensure reading for pleasure, fluency and cultural capital is increased. This support can also be targeted at those pupils with the potential to achieve greater depth who may be working at expected standards, aiming to develop the quality of their thinking and oral answers.

Early Bird is an additional morning booster group that focuses on skills for written answers aimed predominantly at Year 6 pupils in the second half o the academic year. This may be to stretch those working at or toward Greater Depth Standards; to boost those Working Towards Standards or to secure those working within Expected Standards.

One strategy children are equipped with to help them with their fluency is the ‘Helping Hand’ which is a quick reminder of the tools at their disposal when faced with a challenging word: blending, digraph/split digraph, flip the sound, chunk it and sight sound word.

Whole Class Reading

Reading is taught through focusing on the core skills of VIPERS:

V – vocabulary
I –  inference
P – predict
E – explain
R – retrieve
S – summarise

Monday to Thursday the children are introduced to one or two texts or extracts, starting with the revealing of the title and first line/paragraph. Throughout this session the teacher will model their thinking as a reader using the ‘read aloud’ and ‘think aloud’ model and through the use of three key questions: What do we know? What do we think we know? What might happen next?  As the teacher continues to reveal the text, the children are encouraged to become more active participants within the session explaining and justifying their reasons with their peers, agreeing with another ‘because …’ or giving a different opinion, building upon others’ ideas and making comparisons within & across texts on areas such as plot, character, genre, language techniques, style, layout and themes.

The sessions focus on vocabulary, inference and retrieval questions firstly modelled by the teacher or the children complete in pairs, then the children complete vocabulary, inference and retrieval questions  independently within the same lesson. Progressively sophisticated tier 2 vocabulary and sentence stems are modelled in oral and written answers and children are challenged to include these in their own answers where appropriate. Careful questioning and differentiated scaffolds targeted at individuals alongside extra challenges or low threshold, high ceiling tasks aim to provide challenge for the most able readers as well as stretch all toward greater depth standards. These sessions should aim to keep a dynamic balance of activities, including drama, in order to maintain interest and enjoyment as well as prepare pupils for formal written answers.

Friday the reading session is an hour long. Throughout the session all the VIPERS are taught through a comprehension text.  Over a period of three weeks the comprehensions are completed x2 modelled/paired learning and x1 week the children are required  to complete  the comprehension independently, this always the children to practice and apply the VIPERS skills when reading across the curriculum and school day. The independent comprehension provides a low-stakes formative assessment against VIPERS to inform teachers’ subsequent planning.

Book Buddies
Year 3 children are paired with Year 6 children fortnightly to read to each other. This is an opportunity where our younger children are able to benefit from listening to the fluency, intonation and expression of our older children. Vice versa our older children are able to enhance their questioning skills by asking their ‘Buddy’ about the text they have read. Each Year 6 child is given a booklet about how to support their ‘Buddy’ and are required to complete a record sheet of the session.

Story-time
Story-time is a non-negotiable 20 minute slot of time in each day for the teachers to read to their classes; this could be the book they are reading as part of their English lessons or simply for pleasure. These texts have been carefully selected for enjoyment, progression, diversity and coverage of the ‘5 plagues of reading’.

Independent Reading
Children are encouraged to read daily independently for a period of 15 minutes after lunch, providing another opportunity for reading for enjoyment. Teachers will listen to the lowest 20% of readers once weekly and the whole class once per fortnight. During this, they will assess pupils’ decoding and comprehension abilities and progress their pupils through the book banding scheme based on a 95% accuracy of decoding.

A guide to book banding:

Home-School Partnership
Reading records to record daily reading in are taken between school and home. As mentioned, teachers and parents work together to monitor pupil selections.  Regular recommendations and reminders are communicated to parents via Twitter, email and parents evenings. Additionally, the parent community is encouraged to support the school with donations from our Amazon Wishlist of carefully selected texts. Bromley heath is also developing its use of Youtube & Twitter to promote a variety of adult role-models from our school community, famous authors and celebrity readings of books. Volunteers are also organised and briefed in order to listen to readers regularly.

Enrichment
Each year, the school celebrates World Book Day with each year group studying a specific author and encouraging fancy dress in favourite characters from books or indeed authors. We also have an annual English week that aims to further promote and enrich students’ experiences of English language and literature through author visits, visiting readers and special experiences. Around the school, displays such as ‘Author of the Month’ and ‘Extreme Reading’ further enrich the reading environment. Once per month, ‘Reading Cafes’ are held in class where pupils may be encouraged to share a recommendation orally or via a class book of recommendations/display and share something exciting about their book with the class whilst eating biscuits and drinking squash.

Leadership
In order to maximise the impact on our pupils development in reading, it is essential that the reading lead gain an insight into how reading is learnt and taught across the school, identifying actions for the future and providing professional development opportunities for the staff in the best practice that contemporary evidence-based research provides. Book looks, pupil progress meetings, lesson observations, pupil voice, data, drop-ins and collaborative practice with our partner schools all assist with continuous improvement of pedagogy and curriculum provision for all pupils.

How is reading assessed at BHJS?
Reading is assessed formatively through the weekly and fortnightly 1:1 reading with their class teacher, daily whole class reading lessons or interventions and weekly comprehensions (every third one being independent and used to analyse weaker areas). Summative assessments are through the use of PIRA reading tests in years 3-5 that the children take three times a year. In Year 6, reading is assessed termly using past SAT Reading papers. Children who have been identified as not meeting age related expectations are given extra support from Year 3 onwards in order to boost the child’s reading comprehension, confidence, and fluency whilst also promoting an enjoyment for reading.

Impact

Intended Impact

By the end of LKS2 we expect our children to: –

By the end of LKS2 we expect our children to: –

  • Have decoding skills that are secure and hence vocabulary is developing;
  • Be independent, fluent and enthusiastic readers who read widely and frequently;
  • Be developing their understanding and enjoyment of stories, poetry, plays and non-fiction, and learning to read silently;
  • Be developing their knowledge and skills in reading non-fiction about a wide range of subjects;
  • Be able to justify their views independently about what they have read.
  •  

By the end of Year 6 we expect our children to:

  • Read sufficiently fluently and effortlessly, with understanding at an age appropriate interest level in readiness for secondary school;

In addition we expect our children to:

  • Have a love of reading that feeds the imagination and nurtures a critical mind;
  • Read widely across both fiction and non-fiction, developing knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live;
  • Have a developed vocabulary beyond that used in everyday speech;
  • Understand nuances in vocabulary choice;
  • Understand age-appropriate, academic vocabulary in preparation for life-long learning.

Measured Impact

Termly assessment is showing that the majority children at Bromley Heath Junior School are achieving in Reading, and English generally, at age-related expectations. In each year group, we have percentages of children working at greater depth roughly inline or above national expectations and this is evidenced in our SATs results over the last four years:

Pupil conferencing, observations and conversations with parents regarding children’s attitudes to reading and reading habits also provide further evidence that the majority of pupils are enthusiastic readers who enjoy reading fiction and non-fiction for a variety of purposes including pleasure. Many pupils read above and beyond the minimum expectations of 15 minutes a day at home with a large number reading well in excess of this.

Reading Skills

Vipers Year 3 

Reading Skills

Vipers Year 4 

Reading Skills

Vipers Year 5 

Reading Skills

Vipers Year 6