At Roundwood, we believe that the teaching of reading is fundamental to all children’s progress across the curriculum. By teaching every child to read well, making time within the school day to read, and embedding a culture of reading into the core of what we do, we believe that we have the opportunity to make a profound difference to children’s education. We know that extensive reading and exposure to a wide range of texts makes a huge contribution to students’ overall educational achievement as well as positively influencing children’s lives in a number of ways. For example, by giving exposure to an increased breadth of vocabulary; providing a better understanding of other cultures; the development of children’s general knowledge; by providing an insight into human nature all of which will, it is hoped, enable children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading great literature opens children up to ideas, experiences, places and times they may never otherwise experience in real life as well as opportunities to learn about a multitude of people, places and ideas not covered by a school curriculum.
We believe that every child can learn to read with the right teaching and support. We acknowledge that not all children will have had the opportunity to develop a love of reading at home, so this has to be taught and encouraged at school. Children at Roundwood have a chance to read independently, read aloud and be read to during the school day. We promote reading for pleasure and dedicate resources to support reading, including developing the school environment to support reading. We have a wonderful library and a dedicated librarian who actively promotes reading choices and ensures the profile of reading in our school is maintained. We also believe that every teacher should be an advocate for reading and therefore time is devoted to training staff so they are equipped to support children’s enjoyment of reading.
In Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, children’s reading is developed through the thorough and systematic daily teaching of phonics, one to one reading, guided reading and shared reading. Children’s reading habits are encouraged through ‘Give me 5’, an incentive scheme for those children who regularly read at least 5 times a week at home.
In Key Stage Two, children continue to be encouraged to read regularly at home with ‘Reading Rewards’ and participate in “Active Reading” sessions each week. As well as focusing on word reading and comprehension, these sessions centre around high quality texts (both fiction and non-fiction) carefully chosen by each age phase to appeal to the children’s interests or to compliment topics covered. With opportunities to learn from the text’s structure and organisation, these sessions also allow pupils to discuss vocabulary choices, themes and characters and to comment upon and learn from a range of authorial devices and sentence constructions.