Reading

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Reading at Bluecoat C of E Primary School is about learning a life skill and promoting lifelong learning. The skills needed to learn to read are taught with a balance on understanding of the context and plot, phonic skills, word work, punctuation and fluency and phrasing.

Key Focus

Our key focus is on teaching our pupils the skills they need to read and enjoy real books both for pleasure and information. We strive to help our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners; English learning is key in this. We ensure all of our children develop a genuine love of language and the written word, through inspiring learning opportunities

This is encouraged and promoted through weekly school library visits, visits to our town library, and a variety of reading clubs such as Bookworms for Y3s. As well as this, our Y6 junior librarians take an active role in running a lunchtime mobile library for Reception and Y1 children. 

Here at Bluecoats we see reading as holistic to the curriculum. It is interwoven through every area including ICT with our home/school use of the Espresso, Oxford Owl ebook and Nessy websites.

For early readers, Floppy's Phonics is used as the core reading scheme to engage our emerging readers from Reception through to the end of Year 2. 

Project X

We are currently introducing ‘Project X’ for pupils who continue to require support with early reading skills as they move into Chapter 2.  'Project X' reading and writing resources are tailored to capture every child's interest, giving them the best possible chance of success at Primary school and beyond.

Projectx-strand-overview.pdf

Accelerated Reader

The Accelerated Reader programme is being introduced to support reading progression in Chapter 3. With Accelerated Reader, a pupil reads a book, takes an online quiz, and gets immediate feedback. Pupils respond to regular feedback and are motivated to make progress with their reading skills.  Accelerated Reader gives teachers the information they need to monitor pupils’ reading practice and make informed decisions to guide their future learning.

Accelerated Reader Guide for Parents

Fred's Guided Reading

From Year 2 onwards, teachers use and adapt Guided Reading planning using Fred's Teaching. Guided Reading is taught to the whole class and areas of reading, grammar and vocabulary are identified for each session. These areas are explicitly taught through examples of high quality writing. Words are explained through dictionary definitions, pictures, videos and in context with antonyms and synonyms and alternative meanings are also clarified. Lessons begin with retrieval, interpretation and author’s choice questions, and then follow through with all the lessons required to scaffold the child’s successful reading at the end of the block.  This includes rapid retrieval questions and book talk. 

All children have the opportunity to practise reading the whole class guided reading text out loud. Children who are still struggling with decoding skills in these year groups, will also receive group or 1:1 intervention work with an adult.

At Bluecoat School we see…

Bluecoat Book Exchange

The ‘Bluecoat Book Exchange’ exists following our move to the Floppy’s Phonics programme; we have many books which did not fit with the new reading levels and therefore cannot be used as core learning texts. These books are, however, suitable for parents to share with their children to provide reading practice and encourage a love of reading together. Families who want to make use of this resource, which will be suitable initially for children from Year 1 and Year 2, will be able to come into the cafe at drop off and pick up times to choose and swap books on a daily basis. 

A bookmark will be given to all families who wish to be involved, with stickers to be awarded each time a child has shared a book. Once the bookmark is full it can be posted in our ‘Bluecoat Book Exchange Raffle’ box from which six bookmarks will be drawn each term. The winning six will then be invited to a celebratory tea party, during which they will be able to talk about the books they have read. 

Other elements we may see…