Reading
At Bushbury Lane Academy, we value reading as a key life skill and believe that reading is pivotal for academic success, which is what we aspire towards for all of our children.
Reading is a top priority in our school and is an important driver throughout all areas of our curriculum. Ultimately through our reading curriculum, it is our intention for all our pupils to establish an appreciation and love of reading; develop their knowledge of the world around them; learn and utilise new vocabulary and enhance their comprehension skills. Furthermore, we aim to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.
Phonics
We teach phonics for EYFS and KS1 in small group lessons, so that all children have access to teaching, which provides an appropriate challenge in relation to age related expectations.
KS1 and KS2 whole class reading lessons
Reading skills for KS1 and KS2 are taught in whole class lessons, to allow all children access to the skills and knowledge outlined in the National Curriculum.
Reading lessons take place several times a week for the children at Bushbury Lane and are focused around an aged appropriate, high quality text- which changes every half term. Within the lessons, our pupils are given the opportunity to develop their reading fluency and comprehension skills. We teach reading through a 6 week reading cycle, where lessons focus on teaching the core principles of ‘VIPERS’. (Vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summarise). Each lesson has a reading skill focus introducing new learning or building on prior knowledge.
Within lessons, teachers and teaching assistants target support for learners, where necessary, to enable all children to achieve and make progress. Key teaching pedagogies utilised in reading lessons include verbal and written modelling, targeted questioning and thinking out loud.
Increasing the profile of reading
At Bushbury, we want our pupils to develop a lifelong love of reading. To support this, each classroom offers an exciting reading corner, alongside the many library areas, stocked with aged appropriate texts that can be found within our school. These safe spaces are sanctuaries where pupils can nurture their love of books.
Our staff are advocates for reading in our school. They model themselves as lifelong readers and often engage in ‘book talk’ with our pupils. Story time happens at the end of every day and provides the opportunity for pupils to listen to well-loved stories being read aloud.
Reading often and widely
We are committed to ensuring that our children read often and widely, to develop their fluency and understanding of texts but also to develop their thinking skills and broaden their view of the world. To support this, we track how often the pupils are reading on a class interactive reading display and reward learners through a certificate system!
All learners are encouraged to read widely through class reading spines. Within a class reading spine, pupils are challenged to read a range of aged appropriate, high quality texts before completing the year. These texts are from a range of authors, genres and contain important themes. In addition to this, children learn about different authors each term through their ‘Author study’ lessons, which occur at the beginning of every reading journey.
How can parents and carers support?
Parents and carers have access to a ‘Bushbury Lane parent prompt book,’ which provides them with targeted questions to ask their children, whilst reading with them at home. The questions included in this prompt book link to the same reading domains taught within our whole class reading lessons. We expect our pupils to read a minimum of 3x a week at home!
