Reading

At Colley Lane Primary Academy, reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We ensure that our children are fluent and passionate readers who engage with high quality, ambitious texts across the curriculum and, most critically, develop a love for reading. 

Early Reading

Early reading at Colley Lane Primary Academy follows the Little Wandle programme. This is a phonics into reading approach, where the children read books matched to their secure phonics knowledge. Through this approach, children are taught to apply their phonics skills to enable them to become fluent readers. Children take part in three weekly reading sessions, where they read the same fully decodable book aloud in each session with growing automaticity and accuracy.  These sessions focus on decoding, prosody and comprehension. In year 2, when children have completed the Little Wandle phonics program and are secure, fluent readers they then move onto the Little Wandle fluency books.

Whole Class Reading

Whole Class Reading sessions are delivered daily from EYFS to year 6. In Whole Class Reading sessions, we encourage language-rich discussions about texts and explore the themes and conventions of texts.

Windsor Academy Trust’s primary reading spine has been created to ensure that all children are introduced to a wide range of high quality texts to nurture a love of reading. When creating the spine, a variety of considerations were made: whether contemporary or classic; the setting of; themes covered; period set; type of narrative and the makeup of the main characters.

Accelerated Reader

Once pupils are able to decode fluently, the Accelerated Reader (AR) Programme is used to further ignite their love of reading and develop their reading skills. Every morning, across Key Stage 2, children come into school and spend time reading their books and completing their quizzes. Under this programme, children are empowered to select books suited to their level and interest in reading.

Supporting the lowest 20% of readers

We are informed of our bottom 20% of readers through regular mock phonic screening and through our professional teaching judgments. These children are supported through 1:1, or small group, daily 'Keep Up' sessions. This is an intervention which is specific to each individual child depending upon their reading ability and next steps.

For those children who leave Key Stage 1 having not achieved the statutory phonics screening, daily phonics sessions continue, where appropriate.  These children may also be identified by the SENDCO and additional further support is put in place as needed to remove barriers to reading for that child.

In Key Stage 2, children whose reading age is below that of where it should be read daily with an adult in school, providing them with the opportunity to further develop their speed, accuracy, expression and phrasing.

Home Reading

In Key Stage 1, along with the Little Wandle book the children read in their phonics session, each child brings home a Little Wandle book. This book matches the phonetic ability of the child. Children read the same book in their weekly reading sessions which helps them to develop reading fluency and store words in their long term memory. 

In Key Stage 2 children have access to a wide range of texts and are guided and supported by their Accelerated Reader level in making appropriate choices in selecting their reading book.

As with anything, performance improves with practice and children who read at least 20-35 minutes a day, progress their fluency and reading comprehension more quickly. Children are encouraged to read at least five times a week and record this in their planners. To support children’s comprehension our planners are pre-populated with age-appropriate questions. 

We value the support that we receive from our parents and know that this partnership is vital in developing great reading habits and fabulous lifelong readers.

Nurturing a love of reading

We actively encourage reading for pleasure and recognise it as a core part of every child’s education. We aim to instil in every pupil that reading is a life skill as well as an understanding of its role in both personal and academic development.

Activities and approaches used to promote reading for pleasure at CLPA:

• Exposing pupils to a wide range of texts through our WCR spine and comprehension lessons, as well as through their library reading choices

• Teachers reading aloud daily

• 121 reading conferences

• Visits to the school and local library

• Celebrating World Book Day

• Parent ‘Let’s Learn Together’ sessions

• Year 5 & 6 Reading Rangers who take a leading role in making our library a wonderful and welcoming reading space and supporting early reading in EYFS and KS1

• Accelerated Reader Programme to ensure pupils’ ZPD levels enable them to access books suited to their reading ability.

• Home reading

• Class Reading Bears

 Assessment

All children complete the statutory reading assessments (Year 1 Phonics Screening and Key Stage 2 Reading SAT).  We also use termly HeadStart reading assessments to support our children’s confidence in accessing and completing statutory assessments. These assessments are also used by teachers to inform their whole class reading planning.