Reading at North Ferriby
At North Ferriby, we want children to establish an appreciation and love of reading at all stages of their learning journey.
We are committed to sharing high quality and vocabulary rich texts across the curriculum so that children develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live. We encourage our pupils to discover new information and develop their comprehension skills by reading widely using both fiction and non-fiction texts which (where possible) are linked to themes across the curriculum. We want our pupils to have access to an excellent range of home reading texts and feel enthused by the texts they have read.
By the time our pupils leave North Ferriby, we envisage that they will be competent, fluent readers who can recommend books to their peers, seek out books from a range of different genres, including poetry, and engage in discussion about authorial choices or impact on the reader. Once our pupils have unlocked the key to reading at North Ferriby, it is our intention that they will be able to apply their reading skills in order to access any subject in their secondary education and beyond.
Reading across the curriculum
At North Ferriby Primary, we believe that learning is built upon a love of reading. As such, we pledge to read to the children for 10 minutes every day (separate to our reading lessons). This is to ensure that children can enjoy a story read with expression and intonation. We have quality lead texts that we read for 20 mins a day after lunch focusing on reading for pleasure and vocabulary acquisition. See below for the texts we use.
Every one of our themes, which are changed termly, have great books at its core. Our thematic learning often links to the stories we are reading and this allows the children to access the lessons with greater understanding and enthusiasm.
Reading is often at the forefront of our afternoon lessons, whether it’s reading newspapers from the Second World War to discover how it began in Year 6 to reading about Queen Elizabeth II and her coronation in Year 2. Our reading owl symbol is displayed during theme lessons so that children know that they are reading across the curriculum. We even use books to lead our maths learning particularly in the EYFS.
Reading for Purpose
At North Ferriby we place reading at the centre of our curriculum and recognise that being able to read well is a key life skill for children. We believe that every child can learn to read with the right teaching, support and encouragement. Just like any other area of the curriculum we build time for all children to read independently, read aloud and be read to during the school day.
From the Spring term, in Year 2, the children move onto Whole Class Reading. This ensures they are exposed to a wider variety of texts such as poetry and children’s classic novels while focusing more on KS1 National Curriculum objectives such as the author’s choice of language, retrieval, inference and prediction.
From Year 3, we use a Whole Class Reading scheme which ensures the children are exposed to a wide range of texts pitched at age-related expectations. For two days the children will study the class lead text -which is linked to the topic wherever possible-and focuses on key skills such as the author’s choice of language, prediction and summary. In order to guarantee that the children are reading for breadth and balance, for the other three days, they will study texts which are linked through a theme; these texts could be anything ranging from ‘Inspirational Women’ to ‘Songs from Musicals’. Within these lessons, we teach and model how to answer questions covering a whole range of skills in line with the KS2 National Curriculum.
Little Wandle Catch up sessions are used as an intervention to support those working below age-related expectations.
In addition, vocabulary sessions are taught throughout the week during the ‘Pledge’ time every day. These sessions allow children to be exposed to new vocabulary, which they can then apply to all aspects of their learning. During these sessions, children are encouraged to use a range of skills to learn new and challenging vocabulary: speaking, listening, writing, drawing and drama. We have high expectations for our pupils, so we choose texts which incorporate ambitious vocabulary.
Reading is not only taught throughout reading sessions but is also incorporated into other curriculum areas, such as science, history, geography, art and RE.
Reading for Pleasure
Reading for pleasure has so many benefits: it can increase empathy, improve relationships with others and improve wellbeing throughout life. It can also make people feel more connected to the wider community as it increases a person’s understanding of their own identity and gives them an insight into the world view of others.
Children who read for pleasure make significantly more progress in vocabulary, spelling and maths than those who read very little. Children with more positive attitudes towards reading are more likely to read at or above the expected level for their age. Developing positive attitudes towards reading plays a key role in children’s development and at North Ferriby we encourage children to read books of their choice for pleasure to encourage a positive attitude and a life-long interest in reading.
Each child will take a short test which will determine their reading age. This will then ascertain which colour book they can take home. In each colour, there are many books which your child can choose – they can select something which intrigues or interests them thus fostering a love of reading.
Our recently refurbished and restocked library hosts a wealth of genres from traditional fairy tales to modern graphic novels and twisted tales. The children choose a book that interests them to take home, based on their assessed reading age, to read at their leisure, this can then be changed as frequently as needed. Reading records helpfully track themes children may become interested in.
Throughout the year we host whole school reading experiences to strengthen children’s reading enjoyment such as themed reading days, competitions and regular cross phase reading buddy schemes to help more reluctant readers.
