Reading

At St Helen’s Primary Academy, we promote a love of reading which helps our pupils explore a range of themes, embrace new learning opportunities and helps enhance emotional well-being. At St Helen’s we believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. The skill of reading enables children to develop and embed their learning across the wider curriculum. We have high expectations of all children and we encourage children to become confident and fluent readers. 

• Teachers teach reading or phonics 5 x per week

• Reading is embedded and reinforced in the wider curriculum

• Decoding, fluency and comprehension skills are embedded throughout 

• 1-1 reading slots are embedded throughout the day 

• Handwriting and spelling lessons (related to age related expectations) to be delivered 5x a week. 

• Classrooms will be vocabulary rich

• RAG readers to be read with everyday to promote fluency with weaker readers - every child will be listened to over a fortnightly period by an adult

• Reading corners should be inviting to the pupils and effectively display books

• Teachers should model reading and have a daily story time to promote reading for pleasure

• Home readers should be sent home everyday to encourage pupils to read at home daily 

• Classes have access the library to promote reading for pleasure or choice reading

• Baseline assessments of reading ages for ALL children and termly assessments for children working below age related expectations

• Fast Track interventions for children to keep up in phonics or to improve fluency / comprehension in reading

• Pupils will become fluent readers and this will be evidenced through listening to children read.  Teachers will challenge misconceptions both verbally and written through interactive marking. 

• NGRT assessments, RWI assessments and summative assessments will be used to assess reading progress. 

• Children will confidently read appropriate but challenging texts for their reading level and the text will be correctly matched 

• Pupils will know how to utilise reading environments and will develop a reading voice (opinions and preferences)

• Pupils will enjoy reading and be able to articulate their opinions and preferences 

• Pupils will access reading in the wider curriculum more confidently

Micro level - Formative assessment (Task by task) 

Ongoing AFL during lessons through: 

- Eliciting information through questioning and dialogue 

- Providing feedback with clear direction on how to improve 

- Helping children to understand how to become successful (criteria) 

Meso level - Lesson by lesson assessment 

- Knowledge checks at the start of the lesson

- ‘Do now’ retrieval quizzes at the start of every lesson to recall key content and vocabulary from previous lesson

Macro level - End of unit

-RWI termly assessments 

-FreshStart termly assessments 

Mega level - Standardised test 

-NGRT Tests - Baseline and end of the year for ALL children. Children reading below their chronological reading age are re-tested in the Spring term to check progress and next steps to enable them to keep up

-Year 1 Phonics Screening Check 

-Year 6 Reading SATS Test 

All assessment strategies focus on both the decoding and comprehension elements of reading. 

'You can open a book and  lose yourself and drift away. It can help rest your mind' - Year 4 

'Our bookshelves are full of books' - Year 6

'I love the Ice Monster by David Walliams' - Year 3

'My teacher helps me when reading to sound out a tricky word' - Year 1

'I love the story we have at the end of the day!' - Year 2

'Hannah Gold is my favourite author. She retweeted us on Twitter!' - Year 5

Year 1

Text 1 - The Gingerbread Man 

Text 2 - Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak 

Text 3 - The Owl and The Pussycat - Edward Lear 

Text 4 - Beegu - Alexis Deacon 

Text 5 - Lost and Found - Oliver Jeffers

Text 6 - The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse - Aesop

Text 7 - The Bear and The Piano - David Litchfield

Text 8 - We’re Going to Find the Monster - Malorie Blackman & Dapo Adeola

Year 2

Text 1 - On the Way home by Jill Murphy 

Text 2 - The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams 

Text 3 - The Sword in the Stone - from the Legend of King Arthur 

Text 4 - I Asked the River - Valarie Bloom 

Text 5 - The Rhythm of the Rain - Grahame Baker Smith 

Text 6 - The Akimbo Adventures (Akimbo and the Elephants) - Alexander McCall Smith 

Year 3

Text 1 - The BFG by Roald Dahl

Text 2 - Cloud Busting by Malorie Blackman

Text 3 - The Queen’s Nose by Dick King Smith

Text 4 - Fearless Fairy Tales by Konnie Huq & James Kay

Text 5 - The Usborne Illustrated Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Text 6 - The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

Year 4

Text 1 - Charlotte’s web by E.B.White

Text 2 - Varjak Paw by SF Said

Text 3 - The Explorer - Katherine Rundell

Text 4 - The Boy At The Back Of The Class by Onjali Q. Rauf

Text 5 - The Race To The Frozen North by Catherine Johnson

Year 5

Text 1 - Beowulf by Michael Morpurgo

Text 2 - Riddle of the Runes by Jamima Ramirez

Text 3 - The Girl who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farook

Text 4 - The Closest Thing to Flying by Gill Lewis

Text 5 - Cogheart by Peter Bunzl

Year 6

Text 1 - Wonder by R.J. palacio

Text 2 - Holes by Louis Sachar

Text 3 - Letters from the Lighthouse by Emma Carroll

Text 4 - Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah

Text 5 - Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Text 6 - The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo