Reading Policy
Rationale:
At St. Bernadette’s School we have a clear, consistent, whole school approach to reading.
Competence in reading is the key to independent learning and is given the highest priority
at St. Bernadette’s School, enabling the children to become enthusiastic, independent and
reflective readers. Success in reading has a direct effect upon progress in all other areas of
the curriculum and is crucial in developing children’s self-confidence and motivation.
Aims:
Our school aims to:
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Provide the children with skills and strategies necessary to develop into competent
and fluent readers
Encourage the enjoyment of books and reading so that the children develop a lifelong love of books
Develop a critical appreciation of what they read
Develop a critical appreciation of the work of authors, poets and illustrators in order
to emulate these skills in their own writing
Encourage care and ownership of books
Our ultimate aim is for the children to become confident and independent readers with high
levels of enjoyment, understanding and comprehension. To promote enjoyment of reading
and the understanding that reading is a life-long skill.
Objectives:
Reading is closely linked with writing – the two activities reinforce each other. Children
become successful readers by using a range of strategies to get to the meaning of the text.
At St. Bernadette’s Primary School, we believe that literate children should:
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Read with confidence, fluency, understanding
Be taught the full range of reading strategies including:
Phonic knowledge (visual information);
Grammatical knowledge (structural information);
Word recognition and Graphic knowledge (visual information)
Contextual knowledge (meaning)
Be able to self – correct during whole class “Big Reading” lessons; shared reading
activities; group guided reading and comprehension lessons
Have an interest in words and their meanings, developing a rich and varied
vocabulary
Read a range of genres in fiction and poetry
Understand, use and be able to read a range of non-fiction texts
Through reading and writing develop their own powers of imagination, inventiveness
and critical awareness
Discuss books with reference to author, illustrator, genre, theme, and characters, to
express personal responses with increasing fluency
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See the reading process being modelled by their teacher and take part regularly in
activities with the whole class, as a member of a smaller group or individually
Understand the sound and spelling system and use this to read and spell accurately
Have a suitable technical vocabulary through which to understand and discuss their
reading
Be interested in books, read with enjoyment and evaluate to justify their
preferences
Teaching Strategies:
We aim to provide high levels of motivation and active participation for our children at all
ages. Teachers have received training in the “Big Reading” framework in order to teach the
age related expectations and standards for the reading skills: Read – decode; Retrieval skills;
Explore – author, language and viewpoint; Analyse – structure and organisation; Deduce –
deduction and inference.
Teaching Assistants are gaining knowledge of the “Big Reading” methods of teaching
reading and the age related expectations and standards for the reading skills through
teacher led lesson observation and participation. Teaching Assistants have also had training
in the delivery of the Better Reading Partnership which aims to improve the reading of small
groups through intensive reading practice.
We have formulated agreed processes for the teaching of comprehension skills to ensure
consistency and progression of learning comprehension skills (Reading comprehension
Policy).
EYFS:
Key Stage 1:
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All children will bring a book bag into school each day.
Children are provided with a reading book, library book and a home/school reading
diary.
Receive daily Letters and Sounds phonic work, supplemented by No Nonsense
Spelling in year 2.
Individual reading – Teacher/Teaching assistant will hear each child read 1:1 at least
once a week. This is recorded in the home/school diary and the whole class Reading
Folder or Mark book.
Shared reading – using elements of the “Big Reading” model, children share texts
using class books, big books, enlarged texts, iPads, interactive whiteboards are all
used by the teacher to support reading development.
Guided reading – children are involved in group reading. This is adult led and
involves a group of children reading the same pre-selected text. Independent groups
work on mini missions or specifically planned activities designed to develop reading.
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Teacher carries out the PIRA each term and Reading Tests (Test Base). Results are
analysed and are used as evidence of children’s reading behaviours.
Comprehension lessons are timetabled weekly to focus on the teaching of
comprehension skills. We use Cracking Comprehension and Focus on
Comprehension.
Reading aloud – children are given the opportunity to share their written work by
reading aloud to a range of audiences. The teacher also reads aloud a class novel.
We use Pie Corbett’s Reading Spine and the Big Reading recommended list to
support our choice of high quality texts we use with our children.
Parents are requested to always encourage their children to read and to write
comments in the home/school reading record.
The class library is used to provide fiction, poetry and non-fiction books to be
exchanged and taken home on a regular basis.
Cross-curricular opportunities for reading independently and in groups.
 Year 2 work on reading activities to familiarise them with SATs material and in
preparation.
Key Stage 2:
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All children will bring a book bag into school each day.
Children are provided with a reading book, library book and a home/school reading
diary.
Individual reading – Teacher/Teaching assistant will hear each child read on a
regular basis. This is recorded in the home/school diary and the whole class
Reading Folder or Mark book.
Shared reading – using elements of the “Big Reading” model, children share texts
using class books, big books, enlarged texts, iPads, interactive whiteboards are all
used by the teacher to support reading development.
Guided reading – children are involved in group reading. This is adult led and
involves a group of children reading the same pre-selected text. Independent
groups work on mini missions or specifically planned activities designed to develop
reading. Teacher carries out the PIRA each term and Reading Tests (Test Base).
Results are analysed and are used as evidence of children’s reading behaviours.
Comprehension lessons are timetabled weekly to focus on the teaching of
comprehension skills. We use Cracking Comprehension and Focus on
Comprehension.
Silent reading – the children are expected to have regular opportunities to read in
silence.
Reading aloud – children are given the opportunity to share their written work by
reading aloud to a range of audiences. The teacher also reads aloud a class novel.
We use Pie Corbett’s Reading Spine and the Big Reading recommended list to
support our choice of high quality texts we use with our children.
Phonic booster groups are provided for the children who need support in phonics
(Years 3 and 4).
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Parents are requested to always encourage their children to read and to write
comments in the home/school reading record.
The class library is used to provide fiction, poetry and non-fiction books to be
exchanged and taken home on a regular basis.
Cross-curricular opportunities for reading independently and in groups.
Year 6 work on reading activities to familiarise them with SATs material; focus on
the different questions and answering techniques for preparation of the reading
test.
Children who require further reading support follow the Better Reading partnership
which is TA led.
Assessment:
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Reading records provide daily diagnostic assessment.
Cracking Comprehension provides a range of AFL activities for reading
comprehension. The outcome of the tasks supply evidence for the regular review of
children’s progress in reading. The benchmark used in all the tasks is the expected
standard at the end of the year. As part of this process, pupils are involved in selfassessment.
Big Reading – whole class lessons and group guided reading activities using the Big
Reading criteria for planning and assessment are organised in order of general
hierarchy of reading skills. These standards provide a secure and thorough
summative and formative assessment tool for reading.
Reading comprehension is tested at the end of every term using Test Base materials
and PIRA. These provide formative assessment and enable tracking of pupil
progress.
The Role of the Class Teacher:
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All staff are responsible for developing our whole school approach to reading.
All staff will model good reading behaviour and encourage the children to care for
the reading matter in our school.
Teachers will ensure their classrooms are print rich and that books available reflect
different cultures, genres, languages, both in fiction and nonfiction, ensuring
provision is made for those with English as an additional language.
Teachers will complete assessments in the given time frame and ensure termly,
assessments are entered into the school’s tracking system.
Teachers will use the diagnostic data collected from assessments to action needs for
individuals and groups who require additional support.
All staff will encourage all children to learn the value of a life-long love of reading.
Working in Partnership with Parents:
The teaching of reading is greatly helped if there is strong communication and support
between home and school. Reading information meetings are held for parents. Advice and
support is available on parents’ evenings. Regular class reading cafes take place to
encourage parents to come into school and read with their children whilst having tea, coffee
and cakes or biscuits to share. Workshops for reading have been provided for FS and KS1
and planned for KS2.
Resources:
St. Bernadette’s Primary School provides a print rich environment. There is a wide range of
reading books (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) which are colour banded. There is a wide
variety of decodable books particularly in the lower book bands to support the teaching of
phonics. Guided reading books are also colour banded.
A range of non-fiction books are organised into topics and stored in the resource stockroom
for cross-curricular reading activities.
We follow the Pie Corbett book spine and the Big Reading recommended lists in our
selection of texts for our teaching. Cracking Comprehension provides appropriate texts and
extracts for comprehension appropriate to each year group. Magic Story Box used in EYFS
provides a wealth of reading material and resources to drive forward early reading.
Monitoring and Evaluation:
The standards of teaching and learning in reading are regularly monitored and reviewed by
the Head Teacher and Literacy Coordinators. Evidence gathered is used to inform the
School Development Plan and Literacy action plans.
Our policy is monitored and reviewed to ensure that all pupils have equality of access to a
range of reading opportunities and experiences and that all pupils achieve to the best of
their potential regardless of gender, race or culture.