Reading Policy

Countess Anne School

Church of England Academy

We aim through our teaching of English:

• To enable all children to develop to the best of their ability and to use and understand English.
• To enable children to work towards their full potential in literacy and oracy.
• To equip the children with the skills to become competent, confident users of language in all its form.
• To encourage a positive attitude of reading and foster a knowledge and love of books.

Staff at Countess Anne are expected to use both the Programmes of Study from the National Curriculum and the Assessment Criteria used in school to plan and assess pupils within lessons.

Phonics

From Reception to Year 3, pupils take part in phonics/spelling lessons to support early reading and writing. The sessions are based upon the Department for Education publication Letters and Sounds and Support for Spelling. Once the children are secure in their phonic knowledge, they will be taught year group specific spelling patterns. The sessions provide daily practise of sounds or spelling patterns and the pupils are assessed ½ termly.  Progress is recorded on a phonics tracker and given to the Subject Leader to monitor.

EYP Phonics:

Pupils are ability grouped from the beginning of Phase 2 Letters and Sounds. This is to help provide both support for struggling learners and challenge for high ability pupils. It is expected that children by the end of Year 1 have been taught Phase 5 phonics in order to support them in successfully completing the Phonics Screening Test in June.

For pupils in Reception and Year 1, phonics will be planned for and delivered on a daily basis (20 minute sessions). Pupils take part in practical, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning through the use of a range of resources: Phonics Play, Jolly Phonics, Espresso and wordshark. They are also given opportunities to work both inside and outside. Pupils will be exposed to the skills of blending and segmenting from the beginning of Reception and will be shown both real words and nonsense words.

Phonics Screening Test – Year 1 pupils will be asked to sit a phonics screening test in June. It is a test compiled of 20 real words and 20 nonsense words. The words are made up of a range of sounds ranging from phase 2- 5. Pupils who are finding reading challenging due to phonics knowledge, blending or segmenting will be supported in school through intervention arranged by the class teacher.

Phase 1 Phonics:

Within Year 2 and 3, pupils are set across 4 phonics groups and receive a 30 minute session daily. Both teachers and Learning support assistants are expected to teach pupils and provide lessons to complete Letters and Sounds whilst supporting them in the learning of spelling rules for each year group.

Intervention is provided for children who do not pass the phonics screening test in Year 1 from the beginning of Year 2 through weekly intervention to address any gaps in their phonics knowledge. Once support has been in place for a length of time, the child is then reassessed to see if they have passed the phonics screening test in June.

Independent Reading:

Daily Reading:

All of the pupils from Reception up to Year 3 can access a range of reading schemes: Oxford Reading Tree, Rigby Star, Jelly and Bean, All aboard and Rapid Reader. These books are then grouped into different colours according to level of difficulty. The scheme contains a range of books that are both fiction and non-fiction and are read both in and outside of school. Children are expected to read frequently outside of school for pleasure and information and must ensure their book and reading record is brought in daily and changed by staff on a regular basis. It is expected that parents read with their children at least 3 times a week and write in the reading record to feedback to staff.

Accelerated Reader:

Accelerated Reader was introduced to support children in developing word reading, vocabulary comprehension and comprehension skills whilst encouraging a positive attitude of reading and a love of books.

All pupils in Phase 2 have access to the Accelerated Reader scheme.  This is then introduced to the pupils in Year 3 in the Summer Term providing accurate assessment of their comprehension skills.

Each pupil takes a STAR test to give a baseline assessment of their word reading and comprehension and are given a Z.P.D range in which they can read between. These books are both fiction and non-fiction and are chosen by the pupil. Pupils are expected to read frequently both inside and outside of school for pleasure and information and must ensure their book and reading record is brought in daily. Once a book is completed the pupil is able to sit a quiz which will test their understanding of the book and give them a % score. It is expected that pupils should be scoring between 80-90%. To ensure pupils are reading at the correct level for their reading capability a STAR test is administered every half term.

Parents can access their child’s daily reading quizzes and book levels on: https://ukhosted68.renlearn.co.uk/2239949/HomeConnect/. A letter will be sent out each September, which will give them log in details and information on how to set up notification of your child’s access to Accelerated Reader.

Assessing Accelerated Reader:

1. Fortnightly Diagnostic Report :

• Staff are expected to review this report on a fortnightly basis. The report will give staff an overview on how the pupils are doing in terms of their quizzes and their average percentage correct. It will show you how they are progressing towards their targets and identify any problems. The Diagnostic reports should influence intervention and who needs regular reading with an adult.

2. Screening Report:
   • Staff should look at the screening report after each STAR Test is administered. This report will show staff the benchmarks the children are working at. If they are below benchmark then intervention for those pupils should be carried out especially pupils on urgent intervention or intervention.
3. Summary Report.
   • Staff should look at the screening report after each STAR Test is administered. It gives a summary of a STAR test for the whole class which includes Reading age, Scaled Score, Z.P.D and NRSS.

Accelerated Reader results should be used to ensure that intervention is in place to support both vulnerable pupils whilst challenging high ability pupils.

Guided Reading:

All pupils will have the opportunity to take part in a reading session in a small group guided by the class teacher once per week.  This will happen on a weekly basis in Phase 1 and Phase 2. Guided reading sessions should have an objective linked to Countess Anne Assessment strands and these should be recorded on the school’s guided Reading Planning/Record sheet (see Appendix 1).  During guided reading, the adult with each group will record children’s responses to the text and the skill being taught. 

In EYP during Autumn and Spring Term, children are read with on a one to one basis developing word recognition and reading fluency. Guided Reading will then be introduced in the Summer Term.

Guided reading will take place after lunch for four days a week in all classes.

Guided Reading Structure:

Class Teacher focus group:

Within Phase 1 and 2, the class teacher will focus on a text whether this is a newspaper article, a text extract, a story or a picture.  This text may be the focus for a numbers of sessions as the pupils begin to explore and discuss the chosen text. This allows the class teacher to focus on developing reading skills in relation to a text. The reading skills that will be worked upon are: vocabulary, retrieval, inferring, predicting, author intention, comparing, summarising, and analysing. The planning of the guided reading will be based upon Bloom’s Taxonomy where children’s learning will be developed through questioning based upon the thinking skills (remembering, understanding, application, analysis, creativity and evaluating). 

Follow up task:

In KS2 pupils will be given the opportunity to independently respond to a text through a follow up task which is to be stuck in a reading comprehension book. This activity is to be marked using the language of Bloom’s Taxonomy and should provide pupils with an opportunity to further develop their understanding of the text. Opportunities to develop the pupils thinking should be used through activities linked to Bloom’s Taxonomy using the colours of yellow, green and blue.

Spelling/ Handwriting/ Independent reading:

The remaining two sessions could involve an opportunity for the pupils to develop their spelling and handwriting skills. They should also be encouraged to develop their independence by reading on their own for pleasure.

Within Guided Reading, Cracking comprehension is available for staff from Year 4 - 6 to provide pupils with high quality texts that have a range of questions linked to the reading skills that need to be taught and developed. Further to this, all staff are able to use Pobble365 which is a picture and story starter that are used to develop the skills of inference.

English:

Pupils take part in a daily English lessons and each genre is taught over a 4 week period.

EYP and Phase 1

Within EYP and Phase 1, Pie Corbett is used to develop the use of classroom talk to help pupils become familiar with a range of text genres. The pupils learning follows a 4 week cycle as outlined below:

Week 1 – Re-tell. The pupils are encouraged to learn the story using actions and are involved in a range of speaking and listening activities.

Week 2 – Reading. The children will engage in a range of reading activities and will be differentiated through the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Week 3 – Adapting. The children are taught to adapt elements of a story whilst using the significant language and writing frameworks.

Week 4 – Writing. The children are asked to produce a piece of writing using a range of grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. They will be encouraged to self and peer assess their writing and edit and re-write their own ideas. Their final piece of writing will be written up in neat.

Phase 2

Within Phase 2, Each unit will be taught for a period of 4 weeks. Within this time, there will be a 2 week focus on reading and 2 weeks on writing. Pupils will be taught a range of reading skills linked to the genre and encouraged to deepen their understanding through the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy activities.

Further to this, a weekly Read and Response lesson will take place which focuses on the pupils responding to their class book in order to develop their higher order deduction and inference skills. The class book is taken from award winning or classic children’s authors. This session means that a child will have studied in depth eight children’s books by the time they have finished at Countess Anne. The lesson is made up of speaking and listening activities and preparing the pupils for their weekly reading homework. The following books are studied.

Assessment of Reading:

Staff at Countess Anne School are expected to use formative assessment as a way of monitoring the progress of children in reading. It is recorded on Classroom Monitor using the Countess Anne Curriculum Assessment Progress Definitions.

Progress against an objective is achieved firstly by demonstrating the skills of remembering, understanding and application. Once these are achieved a pupil is given the opportunity to deepen their understanding by using the processes of analysis, creativity and evaluation. This movement from ‘remembering’ to ‘evaluation’ is called Bloom’s Taxonomy and is how teachers at Countess Anne decide on the next steps of learning for a child.

Summative Assessment:

Pupils are exposed to a range of summative assessment opportunities:

• - Year 1 children are assessed against the Government’s Standardised Phonics Assessment in the summer term.
• - Year 2 children are assessed using the Government’s standardised Reading Test.
• - Year 6 pupils are assessed using the Government’s standardised Reading Test.

Further to this, when required Countess Anne use GL assessments for all year groups to provide supportive summative data at the end of Summer Term. The pupils take an online reading test, which assesses them against the reading expectations for their year group.

Appendix 1:

Countess Anne School C of E Academy – Phase 2 Guided Reading         Class:            Group: