At Fitzwilliam Primary School, we place Reading firmly at the core of our curriculum. Reading is prioritised from the point that children enter our Nursery up until Year 6 to ensure that our children leave school as fluent readers.
We intend to expose our pupils to high-quality books and text extracts on a daily basis, with children reading them and listening to them being read, so that the they enjoy the wonder of books and foster a love of reading. We have curated our reading spine to ensure the texts we use challenge and engage our readers.
To teach decoding, we follow the Read Write Inc. Phonics scheme and to teach language comprehension, we use carefully selected extracts and books in whole-class, guided reading lessons. Teachers and leaders try to ensure a wide range of books that challenge stereotypes are amongst the titles chosen as well as ensuring that there is representation across our reading curriculum in school.
Within school, classroom libraries and the whole-school library are stocked with books of all genres, a range of authors, classic texts and the very latest titles. Due to the financial commitment of the school and the Trust to Reading, we are able to refresh the books available to the children on a regular basis which contributes to developing the love of reading we strive for.
We intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across fiction, non-fiction and poetry to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills.
It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject.
Early Reading and Phonics – Read Write Inc.
Each lesson starts with a recap and review of previously learnt sounds and words. The new learning is introduced in small steps with staff modelling pronunciation, blending for reading and segmenting for spelling. Children are guided through the whole session with opportunities to apply the learning independently. The programme follows a logical plan that builds up children’s phonic knowledge in a sequential manner at a good pace so that children achieve age-appropriate reading skills. Children are regularly assessed, which allows for flexibility in reading groups, ensuring pupils are in the right place at the right time for their learning. Pupils identified as the bottom 20% of readers are identified swiftly and receive 1:1 daily intervention to help them to make accelerated progress.
Whole class guided reading
Each week, teachers deliver whole class reading comprehension lessons. These lessons are primarily focussed upon fluency practice and developing the comprehension skills of retrieval and inference. Reading fluency is addressed further through daily readers and the use of Read Write Inc. Fresh Start.
