Reading and Literature Spine
High Frequency Words
Throughout each phase the tricky high frequency words will be taught. Each teacher uses a variety of methods to ensure the correct spelling of the high frequency words appropriate to each phase plus specific tier 3 (subject specific) vocabulary. Teachers should recognise worthy attempts made by children to spell words but should also correct them selectively and sensitively.
In Key Stage 2 spellings will be explored in class lessons. Each week the children will be introduced to new spellings, followed by practise sessions so that children have the opportunity to embed spellings and correct meaning. This will include the learning of the statutory word lists in the 2014 English curriculum. Where necessary, some pupils will consolidate their phonic knowledge and skills from Key Stage 1 through the structured interventions using ‘Word Aware’.
Reading
Pupils have daily opportunities to engage in shared, guided and independent reading both in English and other subjects across the curriculum. We aim for children to become independent, able readers, who understand and demonstrate a passion for reading and a love of books. Reading sessions will encourage children to respond to high quality texts in a number of ways through the use of reading journals and the VIPERS approach. Our school literature spine identifies high quality, age appropriate texts that we believe should be read by the time our children leave each year group. Some of these books have been specifically chosen to be used as whole class texts, some for guided reading, some for shared reading and some for independent reading. Each book has been chosen specifically to expose our children to the best stories, poems and authors that exist and therefore the essential ingredients to support them as both readers and writers.
Fundamental reading skills
In order to master the reading curriculum teachers must develop the core comprehension skills. Using the reading VIPERS question stems, questions can be quickly generated. Teachers can ensure that all of the main comprehension skills are covered weekly, taken from VIPERS. Class teachers must ensure that they choose high quality and age appropriate texts to share with their class. In school we have several resources that provide a wide range of text types.
Children will have time to also free read to help develop the love of reading.
Children have a range of reading schemes to choose from including Oxford Reading Tree, Bug Club, Big Cats and a range of real books. In Reception and Key Stage 1 the children will take home a reading book from Little Wandle which is a matched phonics reading books (this will be matched to the phonics they will be learning at that time in class).
All children are encouraged to read at home – not just their reading book, it could be a library book, the newspaper or comics!
Here are the recommended reads for each year group and our literacture spine which tells you the books we use in class during the year.