Reading

Reading

At Cherry Garden Primary School, we believe that reading is an essential skill, which underpins every area of the curriculum. As well as being imperative for learning, it is also a great way to relax and can have benefits for mental health!

Reading does not sit alone and is embedded in all other areas of the curriculum. We realise the importance of developing a lifelong love of reading and providing children with the skills to access a range of text types, preparing them for the future and encompassing our school motto of ‘Learning for Life’.

Reading in Key Stage 1 focuses on the explicit teaching of phonics alongside fluency of reading using the Little Wandle: Revised Letters and Sounds’ programme. Children in Reception and Year 1 apply their phonics knowledge in group reading practise sessions. These sessions focus on:

• Decoding
• Prosody
• Comprehension

From Year 2 upwards, children are taught how to gather information from texts through explicit whole-class Guided Reading sessions. We follow VIPERS for the teaching of core reading skills:

Vocabulary

Inference (and deduction)

Predict

Explain

Retrieve

Summarise

Children are expected to read aloud to someone at home at least 3 times per week. This is then recorded in their planner.

Sharing Books

We know that reading for pleasure is imperative in promoting a life-long love of reading. To promote reading for pleasure, children in all year groups take home a sharing book along with their reading scheme book. This book is chosen by each child as a book that they would like to read.

Reading Books

Children in EYFS and Year 1 follow our Little Wandle Reading Scheme linked to our chosen phonics scheme, Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds. More information on this can be found on the ‘Phonics’ section of our website.

From Year 2-Year 6, children follow our Big Cat reading scheme. Children are matched to the correct reading band, depending on the ARE (Age Related Expectation) grid that children are currently working on. This means that in these Year groups also, children’s reading books are correctly matched to their reading ability. These books cover a range of text types and current topics that are interesting so that children are encouraged to read.