Reading
"The more that you read, the more that you know, the more that you learn, the more places you'll go." (Dr. Seuss)
At Hillcroft, we intend for every child to leave this phase of their education enthused about, and engaged with, reading. The culture of the school will foster a life-long love of reading, whether it be for information, pleasure or other purposes. By providing children with a wide-range of age-appropriate and varied resources, our children’s horizons and aspirations will be broadened and they will be exposed to worlds that they may not have experienced. Reading teaching will focus on securing skills through a sequential and progressive pedagogy; from decoding and fluency to inference and interpretation, depending on children’s individual needs. Their confidence in reading will enable them to make a positive contribution to society and prepare them for accessing the next stage of their education. Pupils will leave Hillcroft able to make the best life choices, supported by their ability to engage with the modern world through different text forms.
Learning to read:
Reading is an incredibly important skill that underpins all learning, across the whole curriculum. Children apply their phonetical knowledge from Read Write Inc. sessions in their reading, decoding and reading words with increasing accuracy as they gain confidence. The sounds they are taught are built on in RWInc. books that they read in school, the books link to the sounds they have learnt so far. The children read during their daily RWInc. sessions. These sessions are to help the children to apply their phonetic knowledge in context as well as to support them in their comprehension of what they are reading.
For more information on our Phonics scheme, please see the Phonics tab: /144/phonics
When children are secure in their decoding skills, they continue building on the skills taught in Key Stage 1 during daily 30 mins Reading lessons. Reading lessons focus on continuing to develop fluent expressive reading, improve understanding of language within a text as well as develop a deeper understanding and comprehension of what they are reading.
Love of reading:
Research specifically shows that the benefits of reading are more likely to be felt when reading takes place through free choice. The outcomes of reading will occur more often and more strongly if reading is enjoyable in the first instance. This is why developing a love of reading from the earliest moments is so important.
Reading is an everyday part of our lives, and at Hillcroft we work hard on ensuring that it is embedded in our culture. We do this through…
- Class reading
- Disciplinary reading opportunities
- Reading with the community
- Staff book recommendations to encourage reading at home promoted through the school Newsletter and then displayed in the Reception area for all to enjoy
- ‘Tell me a Story’ reading environments
- Collective reading in the school library
- Celebrating World Book Day
- Reading competitions
- Providing autonomy for children to choose to read during free time
- Reading sheds in the playgrounds for children to have access to reading books at all times during the day
- Reading Ambassadors as part of the Pupil Parliament in KS2
- Book Clubs
- Book Talk lessons in KS2:
Book Talk lessons foster a love of reading and provide opportunities to discuss a whole class novel. Each Book Talk session is layered with open-ended whole class questions to tackle the three layers of the reading rainbow. Book Talk is structured with three reasons to read. The reasons to read are taken from ‘The Reading Rainbow’. One reason is taken from the top layer of the rainbow under FANTASTIC. The second reason is taken from the STYLISTIC layer. The third reason is taken from the ANALYTICS layer. More information can be found here.
Pupil Voice:
Which character would you like to swap lives with and why?
I would like to swap lives with Alex Bailey from The Land of Stories, book 2 because she and her twin brother go on lots of adventures in the fairy tale world.
Chloe, Year 6
Joe from Billionaire Boy. I would like to swap with him because he has lots of money and a really kind friend. If I had his money I would spend it on a helicopter.
Jess, Year 3
I would like to swap lives with Mr Strong as he is really strong and then I could be a really strong hockey player.
Lewis, Year 2
Tell me about a moment in a book that made you laugh out loud.
In Christmasaurus when the Christmasaurus lickes William like an excitable puppy!
Ethan, Year 4
It was in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Deep End, when Grey wanted to know where all the poo and wee goes in a campervan!
Jacey, Year 4
Aliens love underpants made me laugh cause they were silly with the underpants. They put the underpants on their heads.
Amelie, Reception
Progression of Skills and Knowledge:
At Hillcroft Primary School, we follow the National Curriculum. From this, we ensure that skills and knowledge are taught in the appropriate year groups to ensure progression and sequencing.
Across Early Years, to ensure progression from the newly published Early Years Framework into KS1, we follow the revised and updated July 2021 version of Development Matters. In our Nursery, children are aged three and four, and so the progression maps show the objectives related to Three and Four year-old objectives. However, some children join after just turning three, therefore, with these children and following rigorous assessment of starting points, it may be deemed necessary to look at the Birth to Three objectives too. For more information on this, please see the Nursery and Reception year group pages.
Below are links to our Progression of Skills and Knowledge documents.
