Reading
Intent
At Southwark Park, we passionately believe that literacy skills provide the building blocks not just for academic success, but for fulfilling careers and rewarding lives in the future. With this in mind, we are dedicated to creating children who are motivated and passionate about reading and therefore develop as life-long readers.
Reading develops children’s language and communication skills, enriches relationships and develops creativity and imagination which supports their progress across all areas of their learning. Through study of different texts, they can explore ideas, question and develop their curiosity, predict and make links to become critical and analytical thinkers.
Implementation
During their time at Southwark Park, children are exposed to a wide variety of genres and text types within each year group in order to develop their language skills and vocabulary, breadth of knowledge and allow exposure to a wide range of literature. Within guided reading lessons, teachers plan activities for individual groups based around the learning objectives and skills for their year group. This includes three independent activities as well as two days with adult led small group support based around their current text. Whole class reading sessions are also used alongside this to introduce news skills and topics before the children are expected to secure these independently in subsequent sessions. In addition to this, teachers share whole texts with their classes as part of their English teaching or their day to day timetable which allows children to access texts that may be beyond their current reading capabilities and encourages struggling or resistant readers to take part in conversations around different stories and characters. These texts are selected based on the children’s interests or to link with other areas of the curriculum.
The focus of each key stage varies as the children develop as readers. During the early years, the aim is to develop early reading skills focusing on language and communication. The main emphasis is on the importance of high quality interactions between adults and children to develop their communication and language skills using a range of different activities – singing, storytelling and nursery rhymes – to develop children’s early reading and ability to hear and manipulate sounds.
KS1 marks a crucial stage in children’s literacy development as they transition from effortful decoders, breaking down words into individual sounds, into emerging readers who are able to recognise words on sight and simultaneously comprehend them. This is when pupils begin to grasp the joy of independent reading.
KS2 then builds on the above allowing pupils to consolidate their literacy skills, building their vocabulary and developing their fluency and confidence as speakers and readers of language. They are continuing to develop their vocabulary and knowledge of language and language features alongside their overall understanding of a range of increasingly high level texts. Pupils will be using strategies with increasing independence and sophistication, and will increasingly be able to combine them to look at texts critically and analytically.
Impact
During the Early years and KS1, children are taught using a systematic and progressive phonics approach to support their developing reading skills. Reading books used in class and those sent home are colour banded as their phonic knowledge progresses and their independence when reading and phonetically sounding out their words improves. Running records, comprehension questions, teacher assessment during guided reading sessions and phonics testing/tracking is used to assess when a child is ready to progress to a new colour band.
From Year 2 to Year 6, we use the accelerated reader programme to support children in selecting appropriate texts for their current reading level. Every term, a ZPD (zone of proximal development) assessment is completed online where the children are given a ZPD range e.g. 4.1- 6.1. The books at the lower end of their range are books that they can phonetically decode and comprehend easily. As they move towards the higher end of their ZPD, they will be able to still decode these books but the comprehension may be more challenging. Children are generally encouraged to read towards the higher end of their ZPD as this is where the challenge will enable them to make the most progress towards their overall reading level.
In addition to the assessment above, children are monitored throughout adult led guided reading sessions, independent activities and reading interventions to allow well-rounded assessment of their reading levels and to identify gaps that need to be targeted in future lessons. We also undertake written comprehension tests every term to inform next steps for whole class and individual readers. By the time they leave Southwark Park, and in the following years, we aim to have all of our children in a position where they are motivated readers who have a positive attitude toward reading and a positive self-image as a reader. Alongside reading skills and decoding techniques, our focus is on helping our children to discover the intrinsic value in reading itself allowing them to grow up to derive great pleasure from it.
