Reading

• Children are able to borrow 1-2 books from the school library for home reading.
• Every child is provided with a banded reading book to take home to read, until classified as a ‘free reader’.
• We use the Benchmarking materials to judge the appropriate book band - regular assessments are used to monitor the progress of children working below the level expected for their age. 
• Every child is heard to read at least once per week (through Whole Class Reading) with additional opportunities provided through 1:1 reading sessions out of class (children selected based on need and frequency of reading at home), small group reading interventions (children selected on need) and in class (DEAR sessions across the week and through library sessions).
• Children are encouraged to read at least 4 times at home per week - on occasion, adults within school may be used to increase the regularity of a child’s reading.  Class teachers use a certificate system to reward the children for regular reading at home, alongside Dojo points.  The awards build up across the year and include a variety of prizes.  The children record their home reading in a yellow reading record, which is checked weekly by the class teacher.
• Class teachers provide at least 3 opportunities per week for the children to read for pleasure (through DEAR and library sessions).
• Each term, each class has a class book by the current author of the term.  This will be read to the class regularly across the week.
• Each classroom has its own book collection and reading area, including a range of reading material (e.g. fiction, non-fiction, books linked to the term’s project or science, comics, dictionaries etc).  

Whole Class Reading

• Reading is taught through four 30-minute Whole Class Reading sessions per week.
• Sessions are mostly taught to the whole class.  Some children may be withdrawn some of the time for more targeted group reading work.  Every child will have access to the whole class study at some point during the week.
• Texts will cover the range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays.  These may link with the Project of the term, although not to the detriment of the quality of reading material.  Texts are diverse in style, content, author, themes and genres.  
• Teachers use VIPERS to target questioning, tasks and activities. 
• Within reading tasks, children develop written responses as well as oral.
• Within sessions teachers can provide choral, paired and individual reading, whole class and paired discussion tasks, paired and individual written tasks.
• Children complete a written comprehension task at least once a week. - this varies between using the familiar text the class is studying as well as short unfamiliar texts.

Phonics

• The school uses Twinkl phonics to support the delivery of phonics.
• All staff have been trained in phonics.
• Phonics is delivered as whole class sessions when needed, particularly when Y3 start in September.
• Children who are below ARE in reading will be assessed against our assessment document to identify any issues around blending or gaps in phonics knowledge.
• Phonics will then be delivered as an intervention to those assessed to need it, either in groups or as individuals, dependent on need.
• The frequency of phonics sessions throughout the week is identified through need.
• All Y3 children are assessed at the start of the year to identify their phonic acquisition, with any gaps being identified and recorded.
• Phonics acquisition is then individually monitored as appropriate to need.
• Phonetically decodable books are available in the Lower School book area - any child who has been identified as having gaps in their phonics will be given a decodable book to match their phonic acquisition.  This may be alongside another levelled reading book or a library book.
• Phonic teaching aims to develop both the children’s reading and spelling.