Ark Castledown is committed to putting reading at the centre of our curriculum and ensuring that every child is a reader. We have a two pronged approach to reading; we want to instil our pupils with a deep and lifelong love of books and language, whilst also providing them with the skills to read, developing both decoding and comprehension in partnership. All pupils should leave our school with the ability to read, write and speak in the academic language that they will need to be successful in secondary school and beyond
We place a huge importance on learning the skills of reading, developing both decoding and comprehension in partnership. We want all children to become confident and skilled readers with a lifelong love of books.
Early Reading
To ensure a strong start in Early Reading, we use the Read Write Inc synthetic phonics programme, which is proven to develop fluent, enthusiastic readers, deep comprehension of texts, confident speakers and keen writers. Our team of RWI Practitioners are relentless in their dedication to ensuring each and every child learns to read as quickly as possible.
Children from Reception to Year 2 receive a daily RWI lessons, with opportunities throughout the school day to practise and apply the taught skills. Year 1 and Year 2 pupils also benefit from having an additional speed sound lesson in the afternoon to further embed the skills taught in the morning RWI lesson.
Young readers develop at different rates and the ability of readers in a class can vary. To accommodate this, we group our pupils by ability for these sessions. We track our pupil’s progress with termly assessments, and use this assessment data to review and update our groupings.
Read to Succeed
Children in Year 2 upwards participate in Read to Succeed sessions, teaching them to develop their fluency, vocabulary understanding and comprehension skills. Within the Read to Succeed sessions, children are taught the skills to analyse the text with an emphasis on the understanding of vocabulary and authorial intent. Children will also learn how to make links and connections between texts and be able to discuss themes, make deductions and discuss their feelings and preferences towards the text studied. Year groups have a spine text for each term to work from to extend the children’s understanding of authors and genres. As a result of this, these books play an integral part in supporting the development children’s writing skills. In addition, supplementary texts from a range of genres including poetry and non-fiction are interwoven through the reading programme to ensure pupils are exposed to a wealth of quality texts.
Reading for pleasure
At Ark Castledown we we strive to become a reading school where all children and adults read for pleasure and can share in the joy of books. All our children have access to a shared library, well stocked with a wide variety of quality texts which are continuously updated and reviewed. These books are discussed and recommended as a class, during the Reading for Pleasure sessions. Children make informed choices about their own reading preferences based on the discussions in class. In order to promote reading for pleasure, we designate specific weekly timetabled slots. We ensure that during these times children can read books of their choice, have social interactions about books and share their views and feelings about authors, illustrators and genres.
Reading at home
The most effective thing any parent can do to help their child succeed at school is to read with them regularly. Children in all year groups are expected to complete home reading, and to log this in their reading records. Communication with parents takes place throughout the year, with regular reading updates, workshops and more.