Being a Reader at Gomeldon Primary School

Intent

Reading sits at the very heart of our school, as we believe that every child deserves to experience the joy, wonder and power of reading. Our commitment to placing reading at the core of everything we do reflects our unwavering belief that literacy is the key that unlocks every child's potential across all areas of learning and life.

At Gomeldon Primary School, our high-quality bespoke curriculum, will engage and enable pupils, in particular our most disadvantaged learners, in learning new skills and knowledge and having the confidence and ability to express and communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively with others.

Each child accesses the National Curriculum for English through ‘Being Authors’ (Author: Reader, Author: Writer) learning and applying new skills and knowledge from the 5 main literacy areas of: Reading, Speaking and Listening, Writing, Spelling and Handwriting - not only in their ‘author’ work, but across our wider enquiry focused curriculum.

How does being an Author: Reader link with our school values?

Reflection: Through reading, children learn to pause, think deeply and make meaningful connections between texts and their own experiences and prior knowledge. They develop critical thinking skills as they consider different characters' perspectives, explore stories and reflect on the author's message.

Resourcefulness: Reading equips children with the tools they need to become independent learners and problem-solvers. As they build their reading skills and fluency, they discover that books are powerful resources for finding information, learning new vocabulary and understanding the world around them. They learn to navigate different text types and select appropriate books for different purposes, needs or interests.

Resilience: Learning to read is a journey that requires resilience, perseverance and courage. We celebrate the determination our children show as they tackle challenging texts, decode unfamiliar words, and push through difficulties. Through supportive guidance and impactful methods of teaching reading; including structured intervention when appropriate, our children develop the confidence to embrace challenge, learn from mistakes and keep trying until they succeed.

Relationships: Reading brings our school community together through shared experiences and stories, discussion about books and the value placed on (and opportunity given for) reading for pleasure. Our children forge meaningful connections and develop empathy by discovering and considering different perspectives, by strengthening relationships through collaborative reading activities with peers and adults; in our school where readers inspire and encourage each other.

Implementation

Early Reading & Phonics

At Gomeldon Primary School we use ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ with our Reception and Year 1 children because it is evidence based; demonstrated through its validation process and on-going development work with the Department for Education (DfE). Little Wandle is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme for teaching whole-class phonics and early reading skills and has clear progression from simple to complex phonemes alongside integration of reading practice with phonics learning. It also includes initial support for children with proper letter formation. Little Wandle also benefits our pupils with the inclusion of specific teaching guidance which enables a high level of consistency between those involved in the teaching of phonics.

Key features and benefits of Little Wandle include:

A structured progression for teaching letter-sound relationships (phonemes)

Daily phonics lessons following a specific sequence

Regular assessment to track children's progress

Three, weekly reading practice sessions using books matched to children's phonics knowledge

Emphasis on developing fluency and comprehension alongside decoding skills

At Gomeldon Primary School we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Supporting early reading for children not meeting age-related expectations

We use the Little Wandle programme guidance and rigorous assessment protocols to quickly identify children who are not on track. We then offer a range of supported interventions based on individual needs and assessment outcomes with Little Wandle tracking methods using a graduated approach.

Pre-teaching: Some children benefit from introducing and teaching new content on a 1:1 or small group basis before they encounter it within a whole-class lesson. We use pre-teach for specific children who may benefit from this approach for example, in regards to introducing a new grapheme-phoneme correspondence within phonics Reception or Year 1 phonics.

Keep Up and Catch Up: Pupils in Reception and Year 1 who are not making expected progress are identified though our assessment for learning ‘Keep Up’ approach. Speedy, short-term intervention using targeted additional support for specific knowledge and retention gaps, provides these children with the best chance to get back on track and ultimately ‘keep up’ with their peers learning new grapheme-phoneme correspondences and / or supporting them with additional blending practice before bigger gaps appear. Children in Year 2 and beyond (including those who will retake their Phonics Screening Check) who are identified as having significant gaps in their phonics knowledge will complete the Little Wandle ‘Rapid Catch Up’ intervention which involves short, highly targeted, pre-planned sessions designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading. Children on Rapid Catch Up are frequently reassessed for progress using the Rapid Catch-up summative assessments which inform the next sequence of focused support.

Little Wandle SEND: This is a complete programme that mirrors the main Little Wandle Letters and Sound Revised phonics programme, but has been created to help children learn to read with the right level of challenge decided on a child-by-child basis; within a graduated approach.

Precision Teaching: This is further method of targeted intervention used for pupils that are not at age-related expectations and who have already accessed Rapid Catch Up or other phonics-based routes of additional support. As an alternative to a phonics-based decoding methodology for reading, Precision Teaching supports pupils to build a sight-vocabulary and learn to identify words by looking at and remembering them as a whole unit, rather than sounding out. Precision Teaching can often be a useful tool for supporting our SEND leaners, particularly those with a Specific Learning Disability (SpLD) and those who present with dyslexic traits.

Direct teaching of reading skills

• Reading Practice Groups (Little Wandle) 

Children in Reception and Year 1, (or Year 2 and above completing Rapid Catch up or those who still need to build their fluency) complete three reading practice (small group) sessions each week.  After completing reading practice group sessions in school, the decodable reading practice book used within the sessions is taken home to ensure success is shared with the pupil’s family. Children read each Little Wandle (phonetically matched and decodable) book three times in order to develop phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension as well as book behaviours and the following specific early reading skills:

Decoding: teaching children to use phonic knowledge to read words

Prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression

Comprehension: using dialogic talk to help children to understand the text.

When children have demonstrated successful acquisition of the phonetic and alphabetic code and are able to read Phase 5 decodable texts (including stage appropriate common exception words) with early fluency skills, they will move to a whole-class shared reading approach.

Whole-class guided approach to teaching reading

At Gomeldon Primary School we use VIPERS (The Literacy Shed) which are a specific set of reading comprehension skills used by teachers as a framework for structuring guided reading sessions and helping children develop comprehensive reading comprehension abilities.

VIPERS stands for:

Vocabulary: Understanding and explaining the meaning of words in context

Inference: Reading between the lines and using clues from the text

Prediction: Making reasonable guesses about what might happen next

Explanation: Explaining author's choices, events, or ideas from the text

Retrieval: Finding and extracting specific information from the text

Sequence/Summarize: Ordering events or summarizing main points

In a VIPERS guided reading session, carefully planned questions and activities are specifically targeted to each skill in order to support children in learning and applying these directly to a text or extract. Through progressive shared and guided reading experiences and learning opportunities across school, pupils learn to independently recognise what type of comprehension skill they're using and identify what type of thinking they need for researching or answering different questions.

Impact

At Gomeldon Primary School our belief that reading forms the foundation for all future learning has created a positive reading culture where reading is respected, celebrated and appreciated by all.

In our school, our pupils enjoy and actively engage as readers in our whole-school offering of:

• SSP specific Little Wandle fully decodable phonics reading books for children to share at home after reading practice groups.
• Comprehensive range of Big Cat banded reading books for children reading with fluency from Year 2 to Year 6.
• Access to reading for pleasure (R4P) texts and stories from our school library and classroom book corners or reading areas for children to borrow and read and share at school or home.
• ‘Take 10 to read’ timetabled reading for pleasure time across school; whether this is with a personally chosen R4P book for quiet reading or listening to a class chapter story
• Reading club held twice a week during break times
• ‘Being an Author’ (Reader and Writer) themed experiences such as World Book Day events and virtual author sessions
• Recommendations from our ‘Reading Ambassadors’
• Our carefully selected book-based writing curriculum that takes our children’s love of stories into skill-based fiction and ‘faction’ learning.
• Book and story enhancements within our wider enquiry focused curriculum
• Weekly ‘Reading Raffle’ for regular readers, held during our whole school Celebration Assembly

We are proud of how our strong reading culture supports pupil’s engagement with, and personal development of our Gomeldon Golden Threads. Thoughtfully woven through our carefully crafted and valued reading for pleasure opportunities, in conjunction with the direct teaching of reading and purposeful application of key literacy skills (Apprenticeship) allow us to nurture not only skilled, fluent and confident readers; but also lifelong lovers of literature who understand that books are gateways to new worlds and perspectives (Curiosity) and understanding our role in wider global citizenship (Belong).