At Oakwood Junior School, our aim is for every child to become a fluent reader who can read with accuracy, automaticity and prosody so that they can reach age related expectations or make accelerated progress from their starting point. As well as this we want children to develop a love for reading and read for pleasure on a regular basis.

The aims of teaching reading in our school are to develop pupils who:

• show high levels of achievement and exhibit positive attitudes towards reading;
• read easily and fluently with good understanding across both fiction and non-fiction;
• acquire a wider vocabulary including Tier 2 and Tier 3 words;
• participate in the teaching of phonics knowledge, skills and understanding in a systematic and enjoyable way;
• develop their reading in all subjects to support their acquisition of knowledge;
• develop a love of reading;
• read for pleasure both at home and school on a regular basis;
• through their reading, develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually;
• develop good comprehension drawing from their linguistic knowledge.

Our Literature Spine

Each cohort has a suite of core texts that will form the depth study for the academic year. These texts represent a promise from the school to every pupil that it serves of the literature that it is committed to studying throughout a pupil’s school journey. These texts have been mapped carefully to ensure a breadth of experiences, authors, texts and themes are addressed across the Primary years.

We have ensured that our childrenare exposed heritage texts, BAME authors or protogonists, strong female role models and texts with specific social, ethical, and moral issues such as friendships and dilemmas, for example. These themes are, where possible, linked to our school values: safety, positivity, aspiration, resilience, respect and kindness. 

Our specially designed literature spine fuel pupils' imagination and opens up a treasury of wonder and joy for curious young minds where pupils can develop and voice strong opinions. These literacy experiences become joyful as every children can see themselves in our chosen books; they are a window to the world and a mirror to their lives. 

In addition to these texts, there are core poems that each year group will study in detail. The literature spine has been harmonised with the wider curriculum, where appropriate. 

Daily Shared Reading Lessons 

Children work through a two-week block where each day children have a shared reading session lasting 25 to 30 minutes based on a core text. Each lesson is based on three pillars of CUSP reading: vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. Supplementary texts are used to complement the themes around the core text: these are of varying genres which allows children to access a full scope of literature types.

The CUSP curriculum we use aligns our learning in Science, Art, History and Geography with our reading, which encourages connections between subjects and provides meaningful context.   We are ambitious for all children without exception to be readers! 

First 20% Readers and SEND

Our First 20% Readers are identified early on using their reading age from the Accelerator Reader Programme. These identified children will have additional intervention to and different from their peers in order to access the curriculum dependent upon their needs.

Children who are First 20% Readers will work through a Read Write Inc intervention on a 1:1 basis along with additional daily reading. 

The lessons are adapted during our daily reading sessions for our First 20% children to ensure that our SEND children have access to the same curriculum as all children.   

Read Write Inc Phonics Programme 

Our school follows the Read Write Inc phonics programme throughout the key stage for children who require extra support with their phonics acquisition. The implementation of RWI phonics will ensure all children are able to succeed and achieve.  The teaching of phonics in our school is systematic and all staff are regularly updated with any changes and ongoing CPD.

When the children join us in Year 3, they have a baseline assessment in phonics and are then streamed across the year group as needed. Phonics is timetabled from Monday to Friday where the children have two 20 minute sessions each day. Within each phonics session, children are encouraged to learn the sounds, build the words and build sentences encompassing the learnt sounds/words.  All teachers and TA’s are responsible for a group during phonics; this ensures all of the children’s needs can be catered for. Those children that need above and beyond support with their phonics will have daily 1:1 intervention with a reading teacher.

In Year 5 and 6, children who still require phonics intervention will work through the RWI Fresh Start Programme. Where a TA leads a group, a designated teacher will be responsible for the planning, preparation and assessment of that group.

Regular assessments are carried out by the phonics lead alongside the teachers. A weekly tracking system is sent to teachers to enable them to be informed of pupil progress.

When the children have completed the phonics programme, they continue to look at spelling through the Sounds and Syllables programme: this involves looking at spellings phonetically and polysyllabically.

Accelerated Reader 

When children first become readers, they have access to RWI and phonetically decodable books. When the children have completed the phonics programme they move onto our Accelerated Reader programme.  

A Star test is completed as a baseline and then repeated every 6 weeks which will give teachers the child’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Children read books from our library within their ZPD and then quiz after each book. The children are able to quiz both at home and school. We have a wide variety of books to choose from in our library (over 5,000 books) to ensure that children read for pleasure and learn to love reading.

Assessment 

Assessments are carried out regularly to ensure children are accessing books of the right level and are being challenged in their reading.

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making expected or more than expected progress.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Phonics assessment;
• Phonics screening results
• ZPD scores;
• Reading ages given through the AR program
• Summative assessments each term;
• End of Key stage SATs results

Reading for Pleasure 

The Reading for Pleasure is the entitlement of every child in the school where our mission is to motivate and engage readers. The school has embarked on the OU Reading for Pleasure Programme to ensure that reading for pleasure is wide spread across school. Our reading for Pleasure pedagogy encompasses four practices: 

1) Reading Aloud 

2) Informal book talk and recommendations 

3) Independent reading time

4) A highly social reading environment 

These elements of reading are also found in our daily reading sessions. 

To ensure Reading for Pleasure is given time, the children have opportunity to be involved in a weekly ‘Book Talk’ session where children can share books with their teachers, peers and discuss them. This culture of 'Informal Book Talk' allows children to not only informally recommend books to each other but it allows them to discuss, debate and develop strong opinions about various subjects and themes. 'Book Talk' sessions are designed to be learner-led, social and supported by texts that tempt. 

Children are encouraged to make informal verbal reading recommendations to each other and have reading recommendation slips in the library so they can recommend books as a whole school.

We celebrate reading by inviting authors and poets into school, organising visits to the local library, whole school books swaps, reading quizzes, book fairs, meet the author events and being involved in the Derby Book Festival Book Awards.