Policy

Reading - Intent, Implementation & Impact 

Intent 

At Minet Junior School, reading is a top priority and is a key driver in our curriculum, which has been adapted to meet the needs of our diverse intake of children. Our Reading intent is to ensure our children transition to high school as confident, fluent readers who have a passion for reading (beyond the National Curriculum) and who have lifelong positive attitudes towards reading.

Reading is a fundamental part of our school as it is a skill, which underpins a child’s ability to access the wider curriculum. It allows them to broaden their vocabulary, develop their vivid imaginations and prepare them for the wider world.

We aim to provide our children with a literacy-rich environment, high quality texts and inspiring learning opportunities, which will help them to:

• To read independently, fluently and expressively, with understanding, enjoyment and confidence.
• To foster an enthusiasm and love of reading for life.
• To understand what they have read and link it to their own lives and experiences, developing a deeper level of emotional intelligence.
• To understand the link between reading and writing and apply techniques discovered in their reading and writing.
• To create a language rich environment that will support pupils in their reading and writing.
• To develop comprehension skills of inference and deduction.
• To talk confidently about their reading.
• To apply a knowledge of structured synthetic phonics (phonic, graphic, syntactic, contextual) to decode unfamiliar words with increasing accuracy and speed.  

Reading and Phonics is a high priority to address gaps due to deprivation and cultural diversity, which will feed into all areas of the curriculum.

Implementation 

At Minet Junior School, our Reading curriculum is delivered through a variety of ways to provide the children with frequent opportunities to develop their reading. We teach daily guided reading lessons, which are adapted to engage and enthuse our children from a range of diversities, as well as regular whole class reading within our English lessons. In addition, we allocate time within our timetable for the children to read a book of their choosing independently, as well as time in the day when the teacher reads the children their chosen class book, giving children time to listen and enjoy a book being read to them.

For those children who require further support with their reading, we use ECAR (Every Child A Reader) for children working below their reading age and also run daily Read Write Inc classes for our EAL children who need further support. We continually monitor our children’s development with regular 1:1 reading sessions using banded books, which are also used as home reading books. This is monitored online and parents are provided with Bloom’s Taxonomy questions stems to support reading at home. In addition to this, we also provide numerous opportunities for reading in other areas of the curriculum, allowing the children to develop their thirst for reading, improve their vocabulary and further develop their comprehension skills through cross-curricular reading.

Impact

By the end of their time at Minet Junior School, children will be confident readers who are reading at an age appropriate level. We believe that reading is the key to all learning and that the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of statutory assessments.  As they move through the school, children develop their fluency and comprehension whilst accessing a range of texts with support and independently. Our teacher assessments and termly standardised tests allow us to measure individual progress and attainment. Our pupil progress meetings allow us to identify and implement additional support for those that need it. When they leave us, we want children to possess the reading skills and love of literature that will help them enjoy and access any aspects of learning they encounter in the future.