Reading

Teachers plan guided reading sessions to teach individual children to become fluent in reading and comprehension skills of inference and deduction. We use Pathways to Read from Year 2 to Year 6 for shared reading sessions, both whole class and smaller groups. This ensures reading objectives are progressive across the school, and the children develop comprehension skills through engaging and language rich texts. Pathways to Read links closely to the Pathways to Write units of work, therefore supporting the children with their written work. Pathways to Read provides opportunities to model and develop skills for reading aloud, including reading with intonation, expression and awareness of an audience, as appropriate. The children have opportunities for whole class, group and paired discussion, responding to a range of questions about the texts.

Pathways to Read follows a mastery approach to learning with three categories of skills are developed each half term:

• Ongoing skills - linked to text choices and achieved through selection of teaching activities;
• Core skills - prediction, vocabulary development and retrieval;
• Mastery skills - 2-3 objectives are focused on for pupils to master over the course of the half-term.

Each Pathways to Read unit consists of whole class reading sessions following the four-part structure:

• Predict;
• Clarify vocabulary;
• Read and retrieve;
• Read and explain.

The core elements of each session are prediction, developing pupils' vocabulary and retrieval. The 'Read and explain' part of the lesson is the mastery focus for the majority of sessions.

Reading Schemes

At Christleton Primary School, we use Read Write Inc book bag books to support children in their early stages of reading. These books are closely matched to the phonics stage of each individual child, allowing them to practise and embed what they are being taught in school. Children are also encouraged to take home books to be shared with an adult and read to them so that they can enjoy books of all different styles and genres. Once children have completed the Read Write Inc programme, they can then choose from a range of reading books to continue them on in their reading journey. Children are taught how to choose a reading book that is appropriate for them and allows them to continue to practise their reading books whilst not being too challenging. Reading book choices are monitored closely by teachers and teaching assistants and Running Record assessments are completed to assess children's accuracy where required.  

Reading Fluency

Reading Fluency can be defined as “the ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading, such as decoding.” (Meyer & Felton, 1999). “Fluent readers process written text rapidly and accurately, and comprehend what they read.” (Benjamin & Gaab, 2012). Without very regular reading practise, young children will struggle to apply their phonic knowledge with automaticity, and comprehension will suffer. Both word reading and comprehension need to be attended to in fairly equal measure, for young children, to enable them to read successfully and understand what they are reading.

Children at Christleton Primary School will learn to read with fluency, accuracy and confidence. By year 6, children will have a good understanding of texts structured in different ways in order to access the more complex books expected of them in the next stage of their education.

Our intent is that all non-fluent readers will develop:

• Stamina – able to read more text for a longer period whilst retaining understanding
• Accuracy – children make fewer substitutions, omissions, mispronunciations and additions when reading
• Enjoyment – pupils read more and are more willing to explore a wider range of literature
• Confidence – pupils tackle texts with greater willingness and improved tenacity in teasing out meaning
• Engagement – pupils offer more extended contributions in group discussions about challenging texts.

At Christleton Primary, reading fluency will be assessed half-termly in year 2-6 using an age-appropriate text. Children identified as reading below the rate of 90 words per minute (wpm) will receive targeted teaching from our fully-trained ‘Reading Champions’ to develop reading fluency. Within our targeted interventions, we ensure that: 

• The texts that are used within our interventions are challenging. They should be in line with the challenge expected by the end of the key stage. Texts are chosen that work towards reflecting this challenge.
• The texts are diverse. Children are exposed to a range of text types to hone children’s reading muscles on a range of texts that look, feel and sound remarkably different to one another.

During our reading fluency interventions, the techniques, approaches and activities we use support different phases of the lessons. Some of these activities include: 

• Surveying the text;
• Modelled reading;
• Choral reading;
• Repeated reading;
• Echo reading;
• Paired or partner reading;
• Readers' Theatre.  

Reciprocal Reading

This academic year, we are very fortnate to be part of the FFT's Reciprocal Reading (2023-24) trial which is funded by the EEF. 

Reciprocal reading is a structured approach that is successfully delivered to improve children's reading comprehension. It involves: 

• A structured, discussion-based approach to teaching reading comprehension
• Develops children's understanding of a text
• Uses four strategies: predict, clarify, question and summarise
• Children use these strategies to make sense of what they read and become more confident, independent readers. 

At Christleton, Reciprocal Reading is delivered as an intervention session for children in Year 5 and 6. It is delivered to small groups (4-8 pupils) with one of our fully-trained teaching assistants. Reciprocal Reading sessions run at twice a week for 20-30 minutes. 

For more information, please watch the following video: 

Reading for Pleasure

At Christleton Primary School, we believe that reading for pleasure opens up new worlds for children. It gives them the opportunity to use their imagination to explore new ideas, visit new places and meet new characters. Not only this, it also improves children’s well-being and empathy. It helps them to understand their own identity and gives them an insight into the world and the views of others. At Christleton Primary School, we promote Reading for Pleasure in a variety of ways.

Within our school, each classroom has a welcoming reading area filled with high-quality books for children to read and enjoy. Each library is stocked with a range of age-appropriate fiction and non-fiction texts to support every ability and reading choice and these are regularly updated and refreshed.

We connect with authors on Twitter and become inspired when the authors engage with our school and comment on our children’s work. Some of our favourite authors are Thomas Taylor, Jenny McLachlan, Leigh Hodgkinson, Andy Shepherd, Tom Percival, Nevmah Morris and Tom Fletcher. We have created a dedicated display in our whole school reading area to celebrate and share our author engagement.

Starbooks           

In Key Stage 2, to promote our love of reading, we offer a selection of specially chosen texts in our ‘Starbooks’ reading programme.  These texts have been carefully selected to encompass a range of text types linked to Doug Lemov's '5 Plagues of the Developing Reader'.

Children can earn loyalty points for reading these books and completing book reviews. Each time a child reads a book from the Starbooks menu, they will receive a stamp on their Starbooks loyalty card. After six stamps, children receive a celebratory hot chocolate treat (while they relax and
enjoy reading a book). As well as this, if a child also completes a detailed book review of the book they have read, they will be rewarded with the chance to choose a delicious topping for their hot chocolate. 

Please see below the Starbooks reading lists for Year 3 to 6:

Year 3 Reading List

Year 4 Reading List

Year 5 Reading List

Year 6 Reading List

What do our pupils say about Starbooks? 

Please click the icon opposite for Pupil Voice related to reading     Please click the icon opposite for images of Reading in Action      Author engagement. Click here to see how we engage with authors to enhance our curriculum.