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.

World Book Day 2025 - Children reading in their home language

Georgina reading Little Red R H in Mandarin.MOV

Georgia - Little Red Riding Hood

Read in Mandarin

Copy of Namarn reading a prayer in Arabic .MOV

Namarn - A prayer

Read in Arabic

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…

Reading for Pleasure – adults and children enjoying reading books, listening to books, talking about what they love to read
Enthusiastic adults who are an inspiration to their pupils as readers and aim to support all children to be aspiring readers
READING – children reading in groups with an adult leading or supporting, in pairs, independently, aloud and/or silently, during lessons and at break/lunch times.
Fluent and phrased reading – reading that sounds good at any level from the simple sentence to the chapter of a novel
Well organised enjoyable lessons with appropriate resources
Clear objectives at the start of the session, referred to during the session and then reflected upon at the end
Book introductions (and recaps) – where adults set the scene/introduce characters/explain key vocabulary (not asking children to read COLD)
Discussions – children talking about the text and making direct reference to evidence in the text
Questioning – open ended questions formulated by adults and children and asked of peers and staff
Activation of prior learning – through the medium of text, film, photos, props…help pupils to bring what they already know about the subject to the table and share with the group so that they begin reading with all the neurones firing as to what to expect
Links – being made continually throughout the lessons at all levels and to prior learning in class and prior knowledge of the pupils.
Opportunities for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPAG) as a focus or intertwined in relevant places throughout the session
Use of technical vocabulary throughout the session by adults and pupils
Using reading strategies appropriately – ensuring pupils are combining meaning, syntax and visual cues and are able to articulate what they are doing
Children having ownership of their reading both physically holding and using the book and also being reflective about themselves as readers
Metacognition – the awareness of and ability to talk about what you are doing – this applies to all areas of the curriculum including reading
Metalinguistic talk – children showing an awareness of why authors have selected words or chosen grammar techniques etc. for a purpose
Staff modelling reading – both reading aloud so pupils can hear how good reading sounds and how punctuation works and also talking aloud their thought processes
Time – time planned in for reading, for reflecting and for discussing- are we consolidating reading or extending reading and what next?
Give pupils time to reflect and discuss their own learning from that session what did you learn today?
Recording reading in reading diaries and most importantly next steps

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…

Talking about the blueprints of literature, the types of stories e.g. good vs. evil, journeys and returns, hope etc
Explaining signposts in texts – idea words which give us the signs to understanding the text , for example – or, furthermore, but, he, she, who, what, why, where, when, which
Opportunities for aural reading – for pupils to listen and enjoy and also use inference skills
Use of e-books (Oxford Owl, Espresso, Nessy)
Use of Learning Journals for pupils to note ideas/new learning from their reading session
Reciprocal Reading (comprehension/Inference focus) – a very effective method of pupils learning through child led reading sessions. The pupils, once taught the key skills of Predicting, Questioning, Clarifying and Summarising, are able to discuss the text and challenge their own learning in a very real and powerful way. Groups can run independently with cue cards or texts with a specific reciprocal reading layout or can be scaffolded by an adult
Visualise – pupils are encouraged to visualise parts of the text and then extend their inference about the text

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