Curriculum

Daily Supported Reading

We teach Daily Supported Reading (DSR) in Reception and Year 1. DSR helps children make accelerated progress with their reading as pupils work with trained adults in small groups matched to their independent reading levels. Children are benchmarked prior to the project to level according to reading fluency and understanding. DSR uses scripts to support and ensure consistency and high-quality questioning.

Destination Reader

At Churchwood we teach destination reader in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6. Destination Reader blends a range of learning behaviours and reading strategies, which brought together, allow children to explore and understand texts independently, at a deeper level.

Firstly, children are introduced to three key learning behaviours, which foster both engagement and independence.

Learning Behaviours

• Support and actively listen to others
• Discuss and explain ideas
• Take responsibility for their own / their group’s learning

Once these learning behaviours are embedded, the children learn seven key reading strategies in turn which help them deepen their understanding of texts.

Reading Strategies

1. Predicting
2. Inferring
3. Asking questions
4. Evaluating
5. Clarifying
6. Making connections
7. Summarising

Throughout Destination Reader sessions, pupils develop these core-reading strategies through exposure to a variety of different text types including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The high quality texts used by teachers within Destination Reader sessions link to class topics and sessions are taught daily in addition to our English sessions.

We use the Accelerated Reader programme in Years 2 to 6 to promote a love of reading. It is student-driven, teacher guided. Accelerated Reader puts our children in the driving seat. Engaging quizzes and activities help to hone children’s reading knowledge and skills encourage growth. 

Accelerated Reader is a national program used to assist in the improvement of pupils reading abilities and their comprehension of what they read. Accelerated Reader provides pupils with thousands of book choices (and quizzes) to meet their individual reading needs. Statistics show that the more a child reads, the higher his/her performance is in all subject areas.

Each pupil has been given their log in details for Accelerated Reader. Accelerated Reader ensures children have a lifelong love of reading, developing a reading culture in school and at home. The impact is that all children develop a love of reading while raising the reading achievement for children of all abilities.

100 Books We Read

Intent

Our intent is that every child will learn to read, regardless of background, needs or abilities before they transition to junior school. We want our children to be fluent, confident readers who are able to transfer their skills to every area of their learning. They will be exposed to a wealth of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction to develop their vocabulary, language comprehension and to develop a genuine love of reading and a keen interest in a range of texts. We work to inspire them to become passionate life-long readers who enjoy books and have a desire to read for pleasure.

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and we want every child to read widely, and to gain a rich knowledge across the curriculum. We believe that all of our children can become fluent readers and writers. By offering a wide range of texts within our classrooms and library environment, we aim to broaden their minds and experiences. This in turn will support the development of their cultural capital and allow them to empathise with the world in which they live.

Reading is such an important life skill that it is imperative we enable them to become independent readers. Independent readers who can easily process information, read confidently for meaning, regularly enjoy reading for pleasure, fully engage in all learning and are well prepared for the next stage of their education.

Implementation

We teach early reading through a complete systematic, synthetic phonics programme entitled Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. This is a Department for Education validated scheme and will provide all children a solid base upon which to build as they progress through school with their reading.

From the beginning of their time in our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), children will have a daily phonics lesson. This ensures that children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. These lessons follow the progression expectations for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds. The daily sessions continue when the children are in Year 1 and Year 2 to ensure that they become fluent readers as they move through key stage 1 (ks1) and beyond. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. 

We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress. Four new phonemes and their corresponding graphemes (GPCs) are taught each week and they are then used in the final lesson of the week to review the week’s learning. Children will also learn tricky words during these sessions that are included within the programme. 

In the Autumn and Spring term, Reception children learn phase 2 and phase 3 Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence (GPCs) and then will spend the final term learning phase 4.

Year 1 children begin the Autumn term with 3 weeks of revision of phases 2, 3 and 4 before learning phase 5, which will be completed by the end of the year.

Year 2 children will begin the year by revisiting phase 4 and 5 to ensure all children are completely confident with applying these GPCs in both their reading and also their writing.