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English: Reading

Miss Tullett

English: Reading Lead

Here at Chadsmead Primary Academy, we believe that reading underpins most skills learned in life, which in turn opens doors for the rest of our lives.  Our ambition is for children to develop a love of reading and to enjoy reading different texts through a variety of media and subjects.

Through the delivery of high quality teaching and learning experiences, we aim to enable children to become capable and skilled readers. 

Our reading syllabus follows the expectations of the National Curriculum and has been designed and developed for all our pupils from Early Years through to Year 6.

Our reading journey begins with phonics and is taught through the published ‘Read Write Inc’ (RWI) programme and fully matches the aims of both the Early Years and National Curriculum.

Our chosen method for teaching reading, is through ‘whole class reading’ sessions.  During these sessions pupils learn the essential skills for reading.  We use reading VIPERS to teach the reading skills. 

VIPERS is an acronym used to support the six main reading domains from the National Curriculum.  VIPERS is used during all reading activities to promote comprehension, knowledge and skills.                                                                                                                

V = vocabulary – the ability to read and understand the meanings of words in texts                                                                                                                 

I  = inference – the skill used to uncover hidden meaning by using clues in the text                                                                                                     

P = predicting – being able to make a sensible guess using visual or written clues                                                                                                                         

E = explainingto be able to say why and give reasons for answers                                                                                                         

R = retrieval – to find and recall information directly from the text                                                                                                                                                                                

S = summarising – the ability to recall a paragraph, story, information in brief.                                                                                                 

Our ‘whole class reading’ sessions include engagement in activities that promote the love of reading.  We strongly believe that reading to children is an invaluable pleasure and we promote teacher reading through our whole curriculum.

We have complimented our teaching of reading with Accelerated Reader (AR), a well-established reading scheme.  It supports our reading method by offering our children a scaffolded approach to home reading and reading for pleasure.  AR is used to track reading progress each half term and provide children with a reading range (ZPD).  This ZPD then allows pupils to choose books that will offer challenge for progression in reading.  Pupils enjoy completing quizzes (comprehension checks) on each book they read.  The scores from the quizzes work towards pupil targets.  Positive praise and rewards are achieved throughout. Throughout school our pupils are given 15-minute reading slots to read for pleasure.

Our comprehensive approach to reading ensures progression from Early Years through to Year 6.  Pupils of all abilities succeed in reading and leave Chadsmead with a good standard of reading skills.