Reading

Avonwood Reading Policy: Click Here

Head of English: Mrs Gilder (Maternity Cover Leads: Mrs King & Mrs Millington)

Senior Leadership Team Link: Mrs Williams

Twitter: @AvonwoodDEAR

Our Subject Intent 

At Avonwood, we recognise that reading is fundamental to the success of our pupils across the entire curriculum. Therefore, it is placed at the centre of our provision. We aim to create an immersive reading environment for our pupil’s where everyone is a reader. This is accomplished in three ways:  

1. Firstly, by providing the pupils with access to a rich and diverse diet of texts. This is achieved through the provision of a progressive sequence of high quality, enriching texts and exposure to a wide and balanced range of genres and authors.  

2. Next, we ensure that our pupils read often and widely, for a range of purposes including reading for pleasure/ entertainment, to research and learn about the world around them and to access the wider curriculum.  

3. Finally, we provide children with the necessary opportunities to develop their skills and confidence as independent readers with a focus on fluency, prosody, comprehension, vocabulary and phonics/phonemic awareness. By the time they leave Avonwood, we wish for every child to enjoy reading, to be able to unpick texts with confidence and use reading as a gateway to accessing new knowledge.  

Our Aims for Reading  

At Avonwood, we strive to ensure all pupils are confident and fluent readers by the time they leave Primary school; we believe that reading is the key to success and underpins all learning. Having high expectations and a consistent approach to phonics ensures children are given the best possible foundation for reading, communication and language skills. 

Through reading, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. We therefore place high importance on ensuring that our reading curriculum is rich with opportunities to explore and learn about the world that we live in and the key figures in it. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils who do not learn to speak and read fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised. 

Aims:  

The overarching aim for reading in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for reading aims to ensure that all pupils:  

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding  

• Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information  

• Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, and spoken language  

• Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage

Lesson Structure  

At Avonwood, our lessons follow the 10 Key Reading Principles. These were created to ensure that children are exposed to key reading skills that will enable them to become fluent and independent readers.

Throughout KS2, three days of the week are spent reading and understanding a high-quality texts and the final two days are planned to use both non-fiction or poetry texts. This allows for cross curricular reading, coverage of text types and to learn about real world-wide events and celebrations.