Reading
Reading at Crick
Click here to see our Progression document:
Reading at Home
At Crick we want the children to love to read. Therefore we have a variety of phonics based reading books to get children started in their journey which are used from Reception. Once the children have built up a repertoire of sounds children move onto choosing a banded book, appropriate to their reading level. These include books from; RWI Book bag books, Oxford Reading Tree, Treetops, Storyworld, Usbourne and Project X books. Children progress through the stages as their reading develops in both decoding skills and comprehension skills.
Once the children have completed the book banded books, the children will become free readers (at the discretion of the class teacher). Guided by the class teacher, the children then can choose their own reading book from the library. All children across the school have a reading record book. This is for you to record the reading your child completes at home. Our desired expectation is that children read every day to an adult at home.
As a school we promote reading for pleasure and aim to inspire a lifelong love of reading. Therefore we strongly encourage parents to help children understand what they are reading by asking them questions about their book, before, during and after reading. Please use the comprehension bookmarks below to help with this questioning.
Each class have a reading challenge in their class where the children have incentives to read, read, read! The teachers check and sign the reading records weekly and add the children’s rewards onto their challenges. Have a look at some of the challenges in the classrooms this year;
Reading at School
READ as a Writer, WRITE as a Reader
At Crick primary School we are keen to share books in every aspect of the curriculum and therefore every class shares a high-quality text every half-term. Part of our whole-school approach is to immerse children in a range of class texts, exploring the ways authors use language and to explore this to develop our children as writers. There is a wealth of research to show that one of the most effective ways to become a good writer is to be an avid reader; to unpick language from books and use this as a model for quality writing.
We see the importance of both classic and long-standing much-loved books and novels as well as new and upcoming authors and texts. We’ve invested money in bringing in a range of quality texts for us to share with the children. Every term we also encourage and provide children with opportunities to choose their own books from the high quality list of texts each term. Please see below for information about the books that each class are enjoying and that we are excited about.
Please see the books we will be sharing in our class. There are also some some suggestions of great books you could share with your children at home.
Reading for Pleasure
At Crick we think reading for pleasure is incredibly important. Michael Rosen (an incredible author) explains the importance and some benefits of reading for Pleasure.
Shared Reading
At Crick Primary school, we have a shared reading discrete lesson every week. This is a whole class teaching approach to concentrate on the skills of reading in more detail. These are one of the teachers and children’s favourite lessons. This is another way we immerse children in a range of high quality texts.
At Crick, comprehension is a huge part of reading and exciting the children about texts. These lessons allows children to explore a text in more detail and really understand what a text is telling us. In these sessions we love to ask questions! We explore a range of texts and answer questions around the VIPERS.
VIPERS are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.
Vocabulary
Inference
Prediction
Explanation
Retrieve information
Summarise or sequence the text.
For more information on the VIPERS please follow the link https://www.literacyshedplus.com/en-gb/browse/reading-vipers
Guided Reading
In KS1, we follow the RWI Phonics scheme. Please see our Phonics page for more information on this. However we also use the RWI books in our guided reading sessions, as we feel that applying our phonics learning to books is extremely important. The children are keen to show their decoding skills they have learnt in phonics alongside the comprehension skills they have been taught in the shared reading session. This is a fantastic way to continuously practise our decoding and comprehension knowledge and understanding.
In KS2, we have four guided reading lessons each week. These follow on from our shared reading session so that the children can apply and practise their comprehension skills into their reading as well as continuously practise their fluency and love for reading. Guided reading is carried out in small groups and children are rotated around activities across the week in order for them to apply and practise their skills. We also encourage pleasure for reading in these sessions as we feel that this is extremely important!
Paired Reading
At Crick we love books and we love to promote pleasure for reading! Therefore we have a slot every week where two year groups join up to share books! This is such an exciting time in school and the buzz around books is magical. The children read and ask questions to each other about the books they are reading.
Library Time
Every week children have the opportunity to come to the library with their class to enjoy some reading of their choice. In addition, the library is open during lunchtimes so children have the opportunity to come and read fiction, nonfiction, newspapers, poetry, and books on the iPad and Kindles.
Reading Assemblies
Every week we have a reading assembly where a member of staff shares their passion, enthusiasm and a story for the whole school to build on everything else we do in school around reading. At Crick we believe this to be a valuable assembly to promote different text types, authors and opinions to reading. The children thoroughly enjoy these assemblies and discussing them in detail afterwards.