Intent

Reading is a life skill and one of life’s pleasures.  Learning to read is central to all learning: all other subjects rely on it.  Our role, is to teach the children to read.  We want our pupils to learn and develop the skills needed to decode and comprehend independently and confidently, in order to read anything fluently for meaning and pleasure. We foster a love of reading and teach reading skills from the moment the children enter our nursery until the moment they leave Year 6.

Implementation

Reading is one of life’s pleasures and one of life’s necessities. At Dudley Wood, the teaching of reading has many elements.  As pupils embark on their reading journey, we simultaneously encourage a love of books as we teach them to read.  

Firstly, the children are taught to hear and recognise sounds, to match the visual representation (letter/letter strings) to the sounds, to build words and to segment words; to read fluently, to read expressively with intonation, to read for meaning, to read in order to learn; but also, to read for pleasure. 

Impact

The success of our reading curriculum, will be seen when children become readers.  They will demonstrate an obvious enjoyment of reading, discussing their book choices and recommending books to other; they will be able to read and understand, not only the books they read for pleasure, but text they read within lessons, across the curriculum, and in their everyday life, gleaning knowledge and understanding. 

The pupils will demonstrate their ability and understanding in reading through pupil voice, through their ability to access the curriculum and through the responses they give in their work. 

Pupils will be assessed both formally and informally.  

An informal judgement about the pupil’s reading ability and understanding will be made when a child reads with or discusses a book with an adult, or when they respond to a question in class - their understanding of the question and their response will draw on their comprehension skills and the knowledge they share will have been acquired by understanding what they have read. 

More formal judgements regarding the pupils’ reading ability will be made through teachers' assessment of the pupils’ ability against reading objectives and the use of / outcome of tests.  

NFER Reading Tests are used at the end of each term in Years 1- 6.  

Statutory Assessments take place at the end of each key stage:  

• At the end of Foundation Stage, pupils are assessed against the Early Learning Goals in Communication & Language (Listening, attention & Understanding and Speaking) & Literacy (Comprehension & Word Reading). 

• At the end of Year 1, the pupils' phonic ability is assessed through the Phonics Screening Test. 

• At the end of KS1, pupils complete Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in Reading, which informs the teacher assessment. 

• At the end KS2, the pupils complete Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in Reading. The result is accompanied by a teacher assessment.   

Characteristics of a reader

• Learn and apply phonic knowledge and skills to read words
• Read for meaning using VIPERS skills
• To be able to self-correct
• Read expressively when reading aloud
• Read fluently, accurately and quickly
• Bring a wider general knowledge to their reading
• Knowledge of an extensive and rich vocab and use it
• Motivation to read for study and desire to read for pleasure
• Construct, question and revise ideas as they read
• Synthesize information

Whole school overview