Reading

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Reading

At St George's we use The Literacy Tree scheme as part of our Reading Curriculum.

This is used alongside our class story time.

Quality text selection is key – both for individual book choices, and the selection of texts across a school. Children need a rich, diverse and motivating literary journey throughout their time with you and this applies to all children. Whole-class reading of quality texts should be inclusive and allow all children in the class to access the same rich texts.
The value of teachers reading aloud cannot be underestimated – this not only aids the inclusivity of whole-class reading but provides regular models of fluency, pace and intonation in reading and allows children to immerse themselves in the world of a book in a shared experience.
Whole texts, not extracts – children need to experience whole texts and cannot be taught to be readers through the use of extracts.
A culture of reading for pleasure needs a deep and strategic approach – building this culture takes time and runs deeper than competitions and dress-up days. It is about placing reading at the heart of your school, celebrating it and giving it real value so that it permeates through the very fabric of your school community.
A wider lens on comprehension – comprehension is an outcome, not a skill. We need to teach reading through a wider lens than looking at individual skills and explore whole texts and the range of strategies we use as readers to make meaning.
Book talk is vital – deep discussion about books is essential in order to create real readers. Children need the opportunity to think deeply about characters, plots and themes within books and to discuss these in pairs, groups and with an adult. As teachers, we need to provide children with the models and scaffolds to support them with these discussions.
Vocabulary needs explicit teaching and interactive follow up – building children’s vocabulary is a key component in developing reading. We need to ensure vocabulary is carefully selected and explicitly taught with opportunities for children to practise, apply and consolidate their understanding.

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Please click on the link to see our reading curriculum in depth: /uploads/526/files/English Reading Curriculum Overview.docx

Talk Through Stories

In EYFS and KS1, we also have additional story time and vocabulary time which is taught through high-quality, engaging texts.

The teaching sequence below has been researched over many years and has proven to be successful
in increasing children’s vocabulary.

o Read the story.
o Contextualise the word within the story.
o Have children say the word.
o Provide a student-friendly explanation of the word.
o Present examples of the word used in contexts different from the story context.
o Engage children in activities that get them to interact with the words.
o Have children say the word.

Phonics

Here at St George's, we use the Systematic Synthetic Phonics Scheme: Read, Write Inc. (RWI) phonics scheme.

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

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