Reading Implementation

Early Reading

Reading and phonics

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

What is phonics?

Phonics is the method of teaching reading through the identification of sounds and graphemes. All words are made up of individual sounds and these sounds are blended together to form words. A grapheme is another name for the letters we use to write the sounds - the spelling of that sound on the page. The National Curriculum requires that all children are taught phonics systematically through a program, giving children to tools to read and write any word. At The Greville, the program we have chosen is Read Write Inc. This scheme has been validated by the Department for Education and follows current best practice on the teaching of phonics and reading and educational research about the way that children learn best.

Early reading

Under Read Write Inc, the children are taught a new sound each day. They practise using this sound to read both real and alien words, and to use it in their writing. They read books with this sound in, and revisit it frequently so that it is kept in their long term memory.

The children are assessed each half term, and then placed into groups depending on what they need to learn next. Thanks to our fantastic teaching assistants, we are able to cover a wide range of groups. Each reading teacher is highly trained to deliver the sessions, and Read Write Inc has a culture of constant training and practise so that the teaching standard remains high.

For more information about Read Write Inc, please visit: https://www.ruthmiskin.com/parents/ 

Reading at Home

Please see below for a copy of the presentation from our most recent parent workshop for YR and Y1 parents about early reading.

Love of Reading

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

Stories are a key pillar of learning in Reception and Year 1. Children enjoy getting to know a carefully selected range of high quality stories at school. Some are limited to learning across the curriculum and others are shared for pure engagement, allowing even the youngest children at The Greville to know the delights of being ‘lost’ in a book.

Accelerated Reader  

From partway through Year 2, up to Year 6, children at The Greville transition onto Accelerated Reader when they are ready. Children who have reached the end of Read Write Inc Phonics, are assessed using the Star Reader, which carefully matches them to the appropriate Accelerated Reader level (their ZPD). Children are then free to choose their reading book from a range of books at their level. We have a fantastic library for children to choose their books from, as well as small year group libraries in Years 3 and 4. Children are able to take ‘quizzes’ on the book they have just read and are assessed at four points in the year to ensure they are reading the correct books. Daily, independent reading is a key part of Accelerated Reader and children have time daily to read independently in class. 

Whole Class Reading

At The Greville, whole class reading begins in Year 2 and carries through to the end of Year 6. Our whole class reading curriculum is carefully aligned with our writing curriculum, exposing children to a wide range of texts and genres. We use a whole class reading approach where all the children read the same text as a class. Teaching the whole class means that all children can read with the teacher more often, moving faster through more or longer texts and benefiting from the teacher's expert explanations, modelling, questioning and feedback. 

In KS2, teachers use the Destination Reader approach for whole class reading sessions, which include modelling, discussion of texts and independent reading of both seen and unseen texts. This approach uses well-proven reading strategies known to deepen comprehension of high-quality texts and build specific learning behaviours that support children to communicate and make talk central to the sessions. Talk is a vital element to Destination Reader to ensure that all children are active learners who are engaged in their reading. All children have the opportunity to think, explain, clarify and build on ideas, which ensures that children learn at a deeper level and are challenged by the different view points of their peers. Vocabulary is explicitly taught in the lessons to ensure children have a deeper understanding of the text and continue to broaden their vocabulary knowledge. In addition to the whole class reading sessions, children have regular opportunities to read at their own instructional level (their Accelerated Reader book) meaning that every child is able to access and enjoy reading. Our aim is to build the children's 'reading miles', giving them time to consistently build their reading stamina and exposing them to more books. Children at The Greville experience a broad range of genres, fiction, non-fiction and poetry to ensure breadth of reading as they move through our school.     

As well as the explicit teaching of reading, our children regularly come together as a class to experience shared story time sessions. These allow children to get lost in a text without interruption, hear a skilled reader bring a text to life, and to be exposed to high quality language and vocabulary. Each class has a book corner that is stimulating, well organised and which encourages our children to read. Our books corners, as well as our two libraries, are well stocked with up to date and engaging books to foster a reading for pleasure attitude.