We are passionate about reading at Kilkhampton Junior and Infant School.  Over the last few years we have invested several thousand pounds in order to improve our stock of books.

In addition to this, we have improved our school reading areas and have employed a school librarian, Mrs McGrath.  In addition to this, Mrs McGrath has trained children to be librarians, these librarians open the library at lunchtime for fellow pupils.

In this section you can find information about our approach to reading, our reading scheme and how we encourage our pupils to read for pleasure.

Intent 

At Kilkhampton Junior and Infant school, we believe that the ability to read is fundamental to our children succeeding; enabling them to access the next stage of their education and beyond. We believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future lines of study and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole school approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or higher. We have high expectations of all children and we encourage children to challenge themselves, persevere and pursue success.

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that pupils have opportunities to develop a love of reading. Our aim is to ensure that pupils gain a thirst for reading a range of genres and participating in discussions about the books; exploring the language used by different authors and the impact the written words have on the reader.

Our curriculum has also been designed to ensure that pupils not only read for pleasure but to use books to research and gather new knowledge to extend their understanding.

The reading curriculum has been designed to fully cover the areas set out in the National Curriculum, further details of which can be found in the Implementation section of this document.

Implementation 

Reading is an important part of our curriculum and is an integral part of all of our lessons. Each reading task is planned in accordance with the national curriculum objectives, whilst considering the purpose of reading.

We teach reading through a selection of different approaches:

• Independent reading
• Guided reading lessons
• Comprehension lessons

At Kilkhampton Junior and Infant School we use ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’ programme for phonics and early reading. This programme is a method of learning letter sounds and blending them together to read and write words. Children who have not met the required standard for phonics in Year 1 or 2 have daily phonics sessions working through the phases either individually or in small group sessions. This continues into Key Stage 2 as necessary. Where children do not read at home, staff facilitate extra reading sessions in the school day. We also have reading buddies where an older child and younger child (of a similar ability) are paired together to read and share a story.

Each Key Stage within the school focuses on age appropriate skills (as laid out in the national curriculum document) and uses a range of strategies and interventions to support the pupils.

Children begin to read using the Little Wandle phonics programmes in the Foundation Stage and Year One to ensure that books are fully decodable using the phonics pattern taught. All books for children in these year groups have been sorted so that they are matched to the phonics patterns that the children are learning.  From Key Stage One and into Key Stage Two children continue to read banded books.  We have invested a significant amount of money to ensure our bool stock is interesting and caters for all children.

Our books are still banded to give children and parents information about appropriately challenging books.  Information about our book banding system can be found in the table below.

We believe that regular reading at home is an important tool in developing reading skills and have a yearly reading competition where children are awarded for the amount of home reads that are completed. Levelled books are used throughout the school from EYFS through to Year 6 for in school and home-reading to ensure that children experience a wide breadth of reading opportunities across different genres. Children work through the wide variety of books at their own pace. Teachers monitor their progress and determine when best for children to move onto the next level, ensuring that a range of books have been explored and understood.

Impact 

Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. This way, children can focus on developing their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school.

Attainment through EYFS and Key Stage 1 is continually measured through their sounds and individual reading. Phonics is assessed through the phonics screening test at the end of Year 1.

Attainment through Key Stage 2 in reading is continually measured through daily reading, guided reading and reading comprehension groups. Attainment is assessed using statutory assessment at the end of Key Stage 1 and 2. These results are measured against the reading attainment of children nationally.

By the end of Year 6, children will be meeting at least age related expectations or above.

Key stage one World Book Day quiz 

Reading Journals (Widemouth - Yr 3/4)

The children in Widemouth class have continued to fill their reading journals with wonderful work.  These are special books in which we record our responses to what we are reading.  Mr Whitefield has selected some of the best entries. Check them out below. We hope you enjoy our responses to our reading!