Reading at BHJS

Our 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.

To find out more about how we Implement our reading curriculum and monitor the Impact. Please read the document below.

Download: READING at BHJS – Intent, Implementation & Impact

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.

Reading is taught through focusing on the core skills of VIPERS. Find out more by reading the document below:

Download: READING at BHJS – Intent, Implementation & Impact

A guide to book banding:

Book Lists

Please find below book lists for Year 3/4 and Year 5/6 to help in selecting age appropriate books for home.  If you would like any extra guidance, please speak to your child’s class teacher.

Comprehension questions

In Key Stage 2, there is a much greater focus on developing comprehension skills as children become competent with decoding.  To support this, we would strongly encourage you to discuss your child’s reading with them throughout the school.  In school, we have grouped the comprehension targets for each year group into 6 key areas known as ‘VIPERS’. Please find below (see link) questions for these key skills which are appropriate for all of KS2.  You will also find the curriculum objectives for each year group organised into the VIPERS skills.

Find out more about VIPERS Skills.  Please read the document below.

Download: READING at BHJS – Intent, Implementation & Impact