Reading at Loughborough

We are committed to ensuring each pupil has the opportunity to reach their full potential, regardless of their starting points. We are proud to be part of a diverse community and be a home to many children for whom English is an additional language.

At Loughborough Primary School we aim for every child to be able to:

• read with confidence, fluency and understanding
• have an interest in books and read for enjoyment
• have an interest in words, their meaning and developing a growing vocabulary in spoken and written forms

• understand a range of text types and genres
• develop the power of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness

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Early reading skills

Phonics

At Loughborough Primary School we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. It is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of their background. We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

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Foundations for phonics in Nursery

• We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’.
• We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

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Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

• We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to full-length lessons as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
• Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
  • We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress: Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
  • Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

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Keep-up sessions ensure every child learns to read

• Any child who needs additional practice has Keep-up sessions, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.

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Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week

• We teach children to read through daily reading practice. Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory.

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Approaches to Reading Year 2 – 6: Guided and Shared Reading:

VIPERS

Children are explicitly taught the skills of reading (outlined in the National Curriculum and the KS1 and KS2 test domains) through the use of VIPERS which were created by Rob Smith (The Literacy Shed). VIPERS is an acronym for the reading skills taught (Vocabulary, Inference, Predict, Explain, Retrieve and Sequence/ Summarise).

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Shared Guided Reading

20 – 30 minutes a day is allocated to Guided Reading. Pupil’s reading skills are taught and practised using VIPERS during whole class reading sessions. Reading VIPERS are used by both KS1 and KS2 with a little adaption. The main difference being in Key Stage 1 children learn how to sequence and in Key stage 2 this is developed and children learn how to summarise. This is a whole class approach to teaching reading skills; comprehension skills are explicitly taught to the pupils in these sessions.

Texts are carefully selected by the Literacy lead. The class teacher then leads whole class discussions through strategic questioning to engage all ability groups. The teacher reads extracts of the text to model a high standard of reading then children are selected to read aloud, repeat sections or engage in choral reading.

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Reading Intervention

Extra reading is timetabled for children who have been identified as reluctant readers or working below age related expectation levels.

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Independent Reading/ Table Top Books

At all stages, pupils are encouraged to read for enjoyment. KS2 pupils are encouraged to keep an extended chapter book that they could read at any point of the school day, in an accessible place.

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Visits to the local Library

Each class is timetabled to visit our local library at least once every half term. They have the opportunity to choose new texts to borrow, undertake research projects and enjoy exploring the books during their visit. There are a wide range of genres and bi-lingual books available, these are used to develop pupils’ cultural capital.

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Reading enrichment

We value reading for pleasure and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy. We have identified a core set of ‘Reading Enrichment texts’ to read aloud to each year group every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at Loughborough Primary School and our local community as well as books that open doors into other worlds and cultures.

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Home Reading

Throughout the school, children are expected to carry with them in their book bags, a reader and reading record book. It is expected that they will read to an adult at home. Fluent readers may complete a task in their reading records, read and record a summary of what they have read independently.

Pupils are regularly assessed against the National Curriculum attainment targets. This assessment informs teacher’s planning.

Assessment may be:

• Formative –observation, questioning, participation in discussion, marking of written work, self and peer assessment, shared learning intention and success criteria.

In the Early Years, observations are continuously carried out and assessed against the Early Learning Goals.

• Summative – Formal assessment of Reading takes place once a term using the NFER test and children’s progress and attainment can be tracked using the school’s internal system of assessment; INSIGHT. Gaps analysisi are carried out and target readers are identified.

Pupils complete activities in their guided/shared reading sessions focusing on different reading skills. The responses to these tasks are used as an assessment tool to track pupils understanding.

• The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) also conduct pupil progress meetings with class teachers termly to identify which pupils may require additional support, suitable groupings, interventions and the deployment of adult support is agreed in an effort to raise standards in Literacy.