Intent

At Springfield Academy, we believe that every child can learn to read, become fluent readers and have a love of reading. We do this by providing our children with high-quality reading experiences that will teach them to read and motivate them to engage enthusiastically with books. Our aim is to develop readers who read fluently with good word reading and good comprehension ability and use these skills to read for both knowledge and pleasure. We are determined that every child who embarks on a journey with us at Springfield Academy will learn to read.

Implementation

Reading skills are taught within phonics and through Reading lessons. See the Phonics page of the website for more information on our approach to 'Learning to Read', using the DfE accredited Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised early reading programme.

'Reading to Learn', or reading with comprehension, is the synthesising of decoding and language comprehension. Language comprehension comes through high-quality oral language discussion which is gained through exposure to a wide variety of texts and experiences. It begins through sharing texts even before a child can read for themselves and continues once they are reading independently and with fluency. Teaching and practising comprehension is planned for carefully in specific reading instruction lessons, through reading for pleasure texts like the class read, and across the wider curriculum.

Comprehension in EYFS and Year 1
In the Early Years Foundation Stage and Year 1, comprehension takes place through sharing books and texts with pupils and through developing pupil’s oral language capabilities. Understanding, developing and acquiring an extensive vocabulary has high importance. Pupils are exposed to a wide variety of different text types presented through different media and on a variety of content topics. Comprehension strategies are also developed in the reading lessons as part of the Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds early reading programme from Reception Autumn 2 when pupils begin to decode text and extract meaning for themselves.

Comprehension in Year 2-6
Once children can read with fluency and access texts independently, Reading to Learn takes greater importance and we teach reading comprehension strategies explicitly, giving pupils extensive practice to integrate them. As pupils become more independent, the scaffolds can gradually be withdrawn, and they become more skilful in selecting the strategies needed.
Improving language comprehension comes through high-quality discussion, pupils asking questions and making links with prior learning and experiences. This combination is central to reading comprehension. Many opportunities arise during the school week for comprehension in addition to the dedicated reading lesson: in reading for pleasure texts, class readers, in other subjects and in the media. 

Reading lessons in Years 2-6
High-quality, interesting and relevant texts form the basis of reading instruction lessons and are age-appropriate. The texts which are chosen for these reading lessons are selected with consideration to the following: knowledge, structure, meaning, language and themes. Texts chosen are varied, cover a range of genres, text types and subject matter and may often be linked to the wider curriculum e.g. fiction, non-fiction, formal, informal, picture, film, song, poetry, graphic novels.

The following components form each weekly Reading unit of work:

• Explicit vocabulary Instruction
• The extended reading text
• Oral reading instruction for fluency
• Reading Strategies (explicit teaching and repeated practice of the five reading strategies: question, activate prior knowledge, summarise, clarify, predict)
• Reading Strategies (questioning)

We also use Reading Plus to aid the teaching of comprehension and fluency in children’s reading in Years 3 - 6. During our celebration assemblies each week, we celebrate children’s reading achievements on Reading Plus.

We strive for all pupils to be on track with their reading. When pupils are falling behind, they receive intervention as a matter of urgency to ensure they catch up.

 

 

Reading for Pleasure

Reading for Pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s future success." (OECD 2002)

Reading Environments
The setting:
Every classroom has a dedicated reading area where books are displayed and promoted effectively to entice the pupils to read. The reading areas have displays promoting the books on offer and recommendations from adults and peers. 
The Set and ‘book talk’:
Staff at Springfield are encouraged to continually improve their subject knowledge of children’s literature and find new material and new hooks to engage their pupils in conversations and discussions about books. Some of these will take place in designated Reading for Pleasure sessions but many will take place incidentally through the week. Staff CPD sessions are held to support and dedicate time for staff to improve their subject knowledge or children's literature, authors, and keep up to date with new releases. 

The class read
The class read is time set aside every day for an adult to read to their children purely for pleasure. It models fluent reading with prosody, enables language comprehension and extends knowledge and vocabulary through discussion. Books can be chosen to challenge and also to entertain. In EYFS and Year 1, most class reads will be picture books and poetry that can be read in their entirety. In Years 2-6 most, but not all, class reads should be longer texts that will be read over a number of days or weeks. Once a read is finished, it is made available for pupils to borrow and re-read.

Reading Spines
Our Reading Spines for each year group offers children choice which is vital for pupil engagement and to instil a love of reading. The reading spines are an ever-evolving progressive selection of core 'Brilliant Books' devised for each year group that are high-quality and age-appropriate. They are a selection of carefully chosen texts for pupils to access and teachers to use in their classrooms and schools as part of their reading and writing programmes. The books have been chosen based on the needs, demongraphics and curriculum at Springfield, in consultation with reading spines from other organisations (e.g. Book Trust, National Literacy Strategy, CLPE, Peters books and Open University Reading for Pleasure as well as book award shortlists). Our Reading Spines will continually evolve and change over time as new material is published – they are fluid and should be reviewed and updated every few years.

The reading spines give breadth, depth, diversity and variety to the schools’ reading offer to children. Each year group from Nursery to Y6 has books that are fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic, picture and have curriculum links and that cover a range of diverse and inclusive content. They also cover a range of abilities with some books being accessible for less fluent readers, the majority are accessible for age-related readers and some books aimed to challenge children who are reading at greater depth.

Children are encouraged to share books at home and record their efforts in their home-school reading diaries. When children read at least 3 x a week, they receive a raffle ticket which goes into a half termly Reading Raffle prize drawer.