English: Reading
Vision
We passionately believe that reading is not only the key to academic success, but also to social mobility and life opportunities for our children too. With this in mind, reading lies at the heart of everything we do.
We aspire for our children to be confident and proficient readers. We build on the fantastic foundations laid in phonics and early reading to further develop reading fluency as children move through school. We know that understanding is rooted in secure word reading and language comprehension. As with all our subject areas, reading prioritises vocabulary development given its fundamental importance to comprehension. Likewise, we are fully committed to ensuring that our children have the opportunities (and inclination) to read widely both for information and for pleasure.
Aims
We aim to:
- Nurture a passion and life-long love of reading
- Equip children with the essential knowledge and skills to both decode and recall words with accuracy, speed and fluency (word recognition)
- Use high-quality texts as the core of the English curriculum, exposing the children to a vast array of text-types and authors in the process
- Teach specific strategies to improve a child's understanding of a text including activating prior knowledge, clarifying, retrieving, sequencing, summarising, inferring and predicting (language comprehension)
- Immerse children in meaningful vocabulary to aid understanding and language comprehension (specifically tier 2 and 3 vocabulary)
- Use the reading texts and wider English curriculum to reinforce our school's core values
- Make links to our wider curriculum with a view to building our children's schema of knowledge
- Provide a rich array of enrichment opportunities including visits from authors and illustrators, book sales, library visits and World Book Day celebrations
Curriculum map
Our curriculum map for English clearly sets out the sequence of learning in this subject: English Curriculum Map 2024-25
See below for Heybrook's reading progression document:
Heybrook Reading Progression 2024-25
See below for examples of an English unit overview:
English Unit Overview - The Secret Sky Garden (Y1 Spring 2)English Unit Overview - Floodland (Y5 Summer 1)
What our children say
One of my favourite books from the library was '10 Things I Can Do to Help My World' because we have to take care of our Earth.
If you read, it helps you to learn more words and to understand more.
Reading helps me to be calm and to concentrate.
I especially enjoy mystery stories and plot twists.
Reading helps you to know what's going on around the world.
I even got to meet the author of our English book.
Books that have morals are my favourite.
I loved when we read Beegu in Year 1.
I love the peace and quiet in the library.
What it looks like
Reading at Heybrook