Reading
Intent
At Brodetsky, reading is at the heart of our curriculum and our aim is for every child to leave Brodetsky with fluency and a passion for reading. We develop a positive attitude towards reading and to foster a love of books through our enthusiastic reading culture. We recognise that systematic, high quality phonics teaching is essential, but additional skills and opportunities are needed for children to achieve the goal of being a well-rounded reader, namely comprehension and understanding.
Implementation
We follow ‘Read Write Inc’ from EYFS, throughout KS1 as the validated phonics scheme, we also use Read Write Inc for those children in Key Stage 2 who need some extra support. We ensure all children are exposed to high quality texts as they journey through the school, and have carefully selected a range of fiction and non-fiction books which we feel will build cultural capital, foster a love of reading and enhance the curriculum.
As early as EYFS, children have daily story time sessions and these sessions are discretely linked to the reading VIPERS skills to develop children’s reading understanding and purpose.
As children move into KS1 and KS2, (alongside the Read Write Inc. programme), the development of the reading VIPERS skills continues into whole-class reading sessions, using high quality texts and focused skill teaching. Whole- class reading sessions ensure that all children are immersed in high-quality literature and the discussions that these texts promote. We have chosen literature that links to our curriculum with a historical, geographical, scientific context to support children’s contextual understanding of their curriculum theme. Below shows our varied literature for both KS1 and KS2.
The reading VIPERS are based on the 2016 content domains from the National Curriculum framework. The focus is on comprehension not the mechanics of reading. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask and children are familiar with a range of questions.
V = Vocabulary
Ensuring our children understand the meaning of words.
I = Inference
Being able to infer actions, thoughts and feelings using their understanding of the text, their wider experiences and it’s context.
P = Prediction
Using evidence from what they have read and what they understand to predict what will happen next and how this will affect the plot of the narrative.
E = Explain
Use evidence to explain their answers to specific questions.
R = Retrieve
Finding specific information from a text.
S = Sequence (KS1) and Summarise (KS2)
Accurately pick out the main events and succinctly summarise these for a wider audience.
Reading for Pleasure
At Brodetsky, we believe that children should have time dedicated to reading to immerse themselves in the book; to develop a love for reading and ultimately to read for pleasure. In every classroom, we have created dedicated reading areas that children find welcoming, comfortable and relaxing allowing them to surround themselves in the world of reading. At Brodetsky, we foster the love of reading through our:
- Daily timetabled story time sessions
- Reading buddies – year groups meet up every Thursday to read to each other
- Little Library – families can access this in our school grounds and change books regularly
- Class Library Visits to a local library once a term
- Newsday Tuesday – children choose to present news that they have independently read a
nd researched at home - Non-Fiction Communal Library
- Leeds SLS topic boxes to supplement our curriculum
- Author Visits
- Celebrate events linked to reading including World Book Day
- Shakespeare themed week
- Modern Hebrew lessons
- Interactive curriculum displays
- Research into different charities to support undertaken by the Tzedakah (charity) Committee