Reading

Our Reading Flow Chart outlines key aspects of reading teaching and learning at Aspin Park Academy. 

Our reading progression document.

"When I read I get to explore different places and go on adventures with people." 

We are a reading school!

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum, and we are exceptionally proud of our reading provision. At Aspin Park Academy, we are passionate about supporting our children to become readers who love books and develop the skills to enable them to read and understand a range of high-quality texts across the curriculum. We believe reading is not only the key for academic success but is also a key life skill, and as such we are dedicated to enabling our children to become lifelong readers who recognise the enjoyment in ‘diving’ into a book.

Children learn to read through encountering challenging texts which forms the basis of most English lessons. Our reading lessons focus on developing children’s key skills in vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, and summary/sequencing skills. EYFS and Key Stage One children also learn to decode (see our Phonics page).

We place a great emphasis on children building their fluency of reading so that they can access and understand the challenging texts which form our reading curriculum. Children practice reading daily through our phonics and reading lessons in EYFS and Key Stage One as well as daily reading lessons in Key Stage Two where children learn how to apply their key skills. In our wider curriculum lessons, children apply these skills in context, reading to learn and acquiring lots of higher-order vocabulary.

Each classroom has its own reading area where teachers share their love of books with the children, recommending new and old favourites, and showcasing a range of text types. Children love to become immersed within the narrative of these high-quality havens of literature. As well as lots of practice at school, children are expected to read at home as often as possible. In addition, staff ensure that children have lots of opportunity to practice at school.

"I enjoy reading because when I get into a book it takes me to the place inside the book and I don't want to stop reading." 

Pedagogical Approach

We ‘sow the seed’ by introducing high quality texts that are linked to current learning.  

We ‘engage’ the children by selecting relevant and age-appropriate books and by creating warm and cosy reading areas in all classrooms and in our libraries. All class novels are linked to the year group theme where appropriate. The children begin to develop a bank of vocabulary, phrases and grammatical skills.

We ‘develop’ the children’s skills through daily phonics and reading teaching in EYFS and KS1 with an emphasis on accuracy, fluency and comprehension, as well as with guided reading sessions and class comprehension lessons in KS1 and KS2.  Modelling is a key part of reading to ensure children hear examples of intonation and a ‘story-teller’ voice. We model identifying and defining new vocabulary to help children to understand unfamiliar texts. 

We ‘harvest’ reading by giving children independent reading opportunities. Reading lessons start from EYFS and carry on all the way to Year 6. Reading is promoted in every classroom with reading areas, displays, timelines and curiosity cubes. 

We use the principles of Rosenshine’s research to underpin our approach

• Daily review- based on prior and current learning
• Ask questions to challenge
• Provide models
• Provide opportunity for talk and rehearsal
• Checking for understanding and clarity of learning
• Obtain a high success rate
• Student independent practice
• Effective use of assessment for learning to individualise and support needs through our philosophy of:
  Keep Up Not Catch Up (KUNCU)
• Opportunities to revisit
• Same day intervention

Specific and focused intervention

"Reading makes me explore new vocabulary."

Our Intent in reading is

At Aspin Park Academy, we support all children to become great communicators. We want our children to get enjoyment from reading books and to be carried away by the creative possibilities of an imaginary world. We encourage our children to be enthusiastic and engaged in reading by ensuring that our high-quality texts are relevant and focused on our year group themes wherever possible. We develop our children’s reading accuracy and fluency together with comprehension. We teach our children to be confident readers who can use a ‘story-teller’ voice.

We IMPLEMENT this through 

Engaging teaching, high quality texts, KUNCU strategies and the RWI scheme are key tools that are used to support the teaching of reading at Aspin. Children in EYFS/KS1 are taught RWI phonics and reading daily. EYFS/KS1 children are encouraged to take their love of reading home with appropriate bookbag books and storybooks that they have read in school as well as a reading-for-pleasure book that they can select themselves from our school library.

Year 2 and Year 3 progress to using the Project X guided reading books to explore a variety of the reading domains in detail. They read book banded books and high-quality year group texts. Throughout KS2 children continue to read the book banded books until they become free readers when they are then encouraged to select books from the class and school libraries.

At all stages throughout the school, we teach children the techniques that will build their vocabulary and allow them to search for meaning and inference in what they read. We do this by focusing on the domains donated by the acronym VIPERS – vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequencing/summarising - and teaching children the necessary skills to master them.

The “Fab Five” books (books that are chosen and read repeatedly so that the children become familiar with the stories) are used in EYFS and KS1. We use floor books to document new vocabulary as well as evidence our VIPERS work. Individual reading turns continue throughout school. From Year 2, reading is also taught using Cracking Comprehension and Head Start.  Years 3 to Year 6 work on a specific domain in their reading lessons as well as answering VIPERS questions on an unseen text once a week. Children are encouraged to work collaboratively at times, using talk partners to help further their thinking and develop skills for working with different people.

"Reading gives me ideas and introduces me to new things. It gives you ways of thinking." 

Individual reading turns continue throughout school. From Year Two, reading is also taught using Cracking Comprehension and Head Start. Years Three to Six work on a specific domain in their reading lessons as well as answering VIPERS questions on an unseen text once a week. Children are encouraged to work collaboratively, using talk partners to help further their thinking and develop skills for working with different people.

The IMPACT of our reading approach is 

Children will make good progress every year from their own starting points. By the end of Year 6 children should be able to read accurately and fluently. Our children will acquire a rich vocabulary and will be able to confidently answer a range of comprehension questions around a text. We hope that our children will learn to love reading and carry this skill into future life.

 "I enjoy reading because whenever I'm having a bad day a book can transport me to a different world."

Classroom Environment

Every classroom has an English ‘working wall’ to display and support current English learning. All displays will have a blue border. They may show useful vocabulary, an exemplar piece of work, resources and how to use them. Every classroom has a reading display which has information about the class text, book recommendations, books the class has previously read, relevant vocabulary and reference to VIPERS (reading domains). Every Classroom has a reading area which is enriched with high-quality texts and a variety of genres including ‘books that will make you laugh’, diversity books, poems and much more. In addition, we have curiosity cubes which are used to inspire children to wonder and talk about the current class novel or theme.

Informing Parents

At the start of the academic year, all parents/carers are invited to a year group curriculum workshop where staff discuss the aspects of a reading lesson, including how it is taught, what skills the children will develop, why reading is so vital and how they can support their child’s learning at home. Parents/carers are given access to the reading resources (Oxford Owl and Reading Plus) to further support their child at home. Structured conversations and termly reports also keep parents/carers informed as to how their child is doing in their reading lessons.

 "I like finding the adjectives in a reading book"

EYFS and Key Stage One – Fab Five – Talk Through Stories

In EYFS and Key Stage One we have ‘Fab Five’ books. These are books that both the children and staff love! They cover a range of text types. Each class has five books that they keep for five weeks. Each week the class studies the book using the reading domain VIPERS (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, and summary). The children repeatedly rehearse a text so that by the end of the week, they can recite most of it off by heart using their newly acquired rich vocabulary. These sessions provide further opportunities for high-quality classroom talk, develop the children’s breath of vocabulary, and create an even deeper love of reading. Additionally, the sessions support our children to find their reader identity, critique and evaluate books and make recommendations to others.