Reading at Netherbrook
Subject Leader: Mrs L Frost
Reading is at the centre of the curriculum at our school and forms a core part of all our lessons at Netherbrook. We aim to develop reading skills with our pupils in order to improve their life chances, provide them with life skills and to promote reading for pleasure and enjoyment.
Whether it be reading sources of evidence in History, reading lyrics in music,
researching and reading about key artists or famous architects in art or reading the instructions to create their latest design and technology project; we constantly place a huge emphasis on the importance and understanding that reading is pivotal to each child’s learning and development.
So, how do we teach Reading?
We have a systematic approach to all reading at our school, which begins in our Early Years teaching early reading (phonics).
Phonics in EYFS and Lower School
Phonics is taught in EYFS and Lower School through the new and highly rated (validated) Rocket Phonics programme, to teach our pupils to read, write and spell. Link to phonics page
Whole class reading sessions
Our pupils also have additional whole-class reading sessions to develop their vocabulary and comprehension skills further. These sessions address the common barriers to success by increasing their vocabulary; teaching the skill of analysing a text in detail; and teaching the background knowledge needed to engage with the text.
Reading in English
Reading starts every writing unit at Netherbrook.
During our first phase, pupils immerse themselves by reading examples of given genres from carefully selected texts. In this phase, the pupils spend time analysing a text in detail and understanding the author’s choice of words, so it fits the purpose and intended audience.
We use books from significant authors and other well-known texts to stimulate interest and broaden the literary knowledge of our pupils. We share the 50 Recommended Books for each year group with our pupils and use Book for Topics as a reference tool for selecting cross-curricular books to support our teaching.
Reading Intervention sessions
Pupils who require additional support receive catch up reading intervention sessions.
We have daily phonics groups for pupils in Years 3-6 who have gaps in their phonics knowledge.
We also have reading intervention groups running for those pupils identified as needing further support with retrieval, inference or understanding vocabulary.
Reading books
All pupils who follow our phonics programme take home a school Rocket Phonics reading book, directly linked to the phase they have just completed. This is to ensure all words are decodable and reading is consolidated and practised at home.
In addition, all pupils take home a reading book from our Book Banding Stage scheme. These books instil a breadth of reading across a variety of published reading schemes so that children are able to access a variety of texts to keep them engaged during their reading journey; allowing them to continue their development and love of reading, exploring books with more challenging vocabulary to share and discuss with their families. Using banded books, pupils are able to choose freely from within a structured range, making reading more independent and enjoyable.
Pupils, who have completed the phonics programme, take home reading books from the Book Banding Scheme. To encourage a breadth of genre, all children reading at this level take home a fiction and a non-fiction book.
