Reading

Reading Lead: Heather Hogarth

At St Williams, our main aim is to instill the love of reading to all children. In order to do this they will be given a range of books as home readers to excite and develop their reading skills. Our chosen scheme is Bug Club as this matches what is taught in phonics perfectly. When the children have finished the phonics programme, they will move on to a range of different books in our school scheme, before becoming free readers. They will be assessed before moving on to the next stage to ensure that the children can access the book and also understand what they are reading.  

Early Readers

Our early reading books are all fully decodable and only use very few sounds in each book. This is to ensure that the children fully recognise the grapheme before being introduced to more phonemes. The books are split up into phases, and will be allocated as the children are taught a new sound in phonics. Alongside the phonemes (sounds), the children are taught 'tricky words' that are not decodable. These words have to be taught and recognised by sight. 

Developing Readers 

When the children have completed phase 6, and are able to recognise and use all the sounds fully, they will then move onto a range of different books. These will not be decodable as they now have the skills to sound out and blend unfamiliar words. These books will be closely matched to the individuals comprehension level, and also to their understanding of language. 

Fluent Readers 

When the children become fluent readers, they will move onto books in our school library. We have a range of different authors, genres and reading levels. The children will supported in making a good choice of book for them to read. 

Guided Reading 

Guided reading is on a carousel for 2 days in Class 2 and 4 days in Class 1. 

In Class 1, the children will be reading the same book twice during the week. The first session builds on phonetical knowledge and children recognising the different graphemes. The second session focuses more on the comprehension of the story and developing the language skills. The children will also have a follow up activity linked to their learning that they can access independently. 

In Class 2, the children complete a pre read, teacher led read/ activity and a follow up session. Whilst with the teacher, the children will be encouraged to develop intonation and expression. Discussion will be around the content of the book, character analysis and how the author has used certain features within their writing.  

Home Readers

Every pupil at St William's has an individual login for Active Learn Primary, this site has books for every phase and every level thereafter. Teachers allocate the books to the children based on their individual level. Active Learn Primary (Bug Club) has inbuilt questions for the children to develop their comprehension, language and phonics skills. Used regularly, this can accelerate the learning for the children.