Reading
Reading Vision Statement
Reading at Stoke Park
At Stoke Park Junior School, we believe that all children can achieve in reading, both for pleasure and in their comprehension and understanding. We believe, through reading, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. We feel that reading enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.
As part of our varied and rich curriculum, driven by high quality and engaging texts, we provide children with a plethora of exciting books to explore. We ensure that children are given plenty of opportunities to access and enjoy these great books through our reading challenge initiatives in each year group; our class reads; our well stocked library and whole school activities offer a well-balanced selection of books for children to learn from, which are linked to the concepts taught and wider curriculum.
Our aim is to embed a deep love of reading and offer wide experiences of reading to all the children we teach therefore preparing them for future learning and ways to support emotional wellbeing.
Learning to Read at Stoke Park
At Stoke Park Junior School, we have a range of emergent and competent readers whom we aim to support and challenge on their journey to become fluent and expressive readers with a good understanding of what they read. Every child has a ‘Learn to Read’ books which are phonically decodable or colour banded. These books are are closely matched to children’s phonic and comprehension needs. These learn to read books are essential for building our children’s fluency and stamina for reading as well provide a rich diet of stories from a range of rich and stimulating genres.
In order to support our emergent readers, and in partnership with our neighbouring infant school; Stoke Park Infant School, we use Bug Club as our systematic synthetic phonics scheme. For those readers who are still developing their fluency and automaticity of decoding, we use a range of Bug Club decodable books that are matched to the children’s phonic ability so that they can practise reading with the sounds that they know. These books are available in book form and through our online platform to allow easy access for all. Therefore, the children can practise the skill of reading leading to an enjoyable, positive experience.
At Stoke Park, we promote a ‘three reads approach’ to reading fluency where we ask children, below lime band, to read their books three times, each for a different purpose. It is at the teachers discretion if children are asked to read a book additional times to ensure fluency and comprehension are secure.
1st read= Decoding This means that the children read their book and ‘sound out’ and breakdown words using their phonic knowledge then read the sentences back fluently. | 2nd read= Fluency Once the words have been decoded, the purpose of the second read is to read sentences fluently and at an appropriate pace and prosody for the style of writing. | 3rd read= Comprehension Now the story or book has been read fluently, the children can now demonstrate their understanding by answering questions about the test. Please see below question stems that can be used at home to support. |
By working in partnership with our families, we ensure that our children develop the automaticity of decoding and appropriate prosody to read expressively using intonation as well as develop their ability to comprehend what they have read.
Reading for Pleasure
At Stoke Park Junior School, each year group has its own reading challenge and incentives to promote reading for pleasure and the partnership of working with our families at home. Each week the children have the opportunity to visit the school’s well-stocked library where they can sit back and share books in this beautiful place. Here, the children are able to choose a ‘Love to Read’ book which is a book of choice that could support a growing appetite for a particular series of books or a new interest or passion. This is a book that the children can bring home and read to or with their loved ones- where we can take a moment and lose ourselves in a good book!
Additionally at Stoke Park, we promote a ‘Book swap’ in each year group where the children are actively encouraged to bring in their previously loved books that they no longer need and they can ‘swap’ their book with any other book that they would like to take home and read. This is a great incentive to recycle books that you may not read anymore and could swap to find your next inspiring and favourite book.
In order to support our reading for pleasure culture, we have enlisted a team of Bookworms that are reading books to recommend to the school. These bookworms meet weekly to review their books and choose titles that they would recommend for the school or year groups to read. These recommendations from our Bookworms are then shared in assemblies to inspire the next generation of bookworms to share great books that they have found.
Throughout the year we also host different events including paired reading and ‘book and a bite’ sessions in our library and classrooms to involve our community to come and share a book.