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Reading

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Intent Statement:

It is our intent at Paulton Infant School to provide pupils with a high-quality education in English that will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively. We believe that children need to develop a secure knowledge-base in Literacy, which follows a clear pathway of progression as they advance through the primary curriculum. We recognise that reading is a key life skill that is crucial to a high quality education and lays the foundations for lifelong learning. We are committed to ensuring that a love of reading is developed in every child at Paulton Infant School. Through reading, children can; explore the world around them, discover inspiring facts or even be transported to imaginative new worlds all whilst supporting their language development and understanding of vocabulary.

 

“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book!” – Dr. Seuss

 

However, for many children, learning to read is a difficult skill to master and one that can be very frustrating to children. As such, our approach to reading at Paulton Infant School strives to nurture a resilience within all pupils and thus establish a lasting love of reading from the start of their schooling experience. We strive to ensure that reading is promoted as an enriching and enjoyable experience to both children and parents/carers. 

 

All children’s experiences are as unique as they are and home circumstances differ vastly between each family. For some children, we recognise that personal libraries may be very limited and their experience with books may be restricted as a result. However, our belief is that all children, regardless of their background and abilities, have the potential to be successful readers and within school we follow a growth mind-set approach that endeavours to support the needs of all children. Speaking and listening is prioritised in order to build children’s vocabulary so that they are able to understand more complex texts.  

 

Throughout our school, we enable children to explore books positively right from the beginning of their educational journey. We encourage children to explore, understand and enjoy the features of a book from the beginning of EYFS and maximise this through the use of daily story time. We provide children opportunities to engage in a variety of environments where high quality, age appropriate examples of literature are present and allow children to make personal selections and develop a passion and interest in reading and text choices. Across our curriculum, we support children to develop their appreciation of text types and reading for pleasure and knowledge, highlighting how reading is essential for everyday life. We incorporate a variety of approaches which support children in spotting clues and applying strategies to understand texts at a deeper level. 

 

Therefore, at Paulton Infant School, it is our aim that through high-quality, well planned and focused opportunities from the beginning of schooling, that each and every child within our school is supported to develop essential reading skills. We aim to do this by immersing children in stories, poems, rhymes, fiction and non-fiction texts to develop children’s vocabulary, language comprehension and love of reading. Through this rich and varied diet of carefully planned texts, we aim to teach children not just to be successful readers, but to engage in all aspects of learning across the curriculum and be successful learners for life.

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Our Curriculum Map

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Paulton Infant School Reading Curriculum Map 2022-23 Cycle A

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Teaching Reading at Paulton Infant School:

At Paulton Infant School, our aim is to enable children to develop their decoding fluency and comprehension skills to be competent readers. We also encourage every child to select books to share with friends at school and their families in order to develop a love of reading. 

 

Reading at Paulton infant school is taught and supported in a number of ways. Developing successful reading skills is achieved through daily phonics sessions, small group intervention where necessary, guided reading sessions and English lessons. We also encourage reading opportunities throughout the curriculum to highlight it's importance. 

Phonics:
Information about Phonics teaching and our use of Unlocking Letters and Sounds can be found on our Phonics page.

Supporting Reading at Home:

To ensure all our children become successful readers we work collaboratively with our parents and the wider community and recognise that it is a team effort in engaging children with reading. We work in partnership with our parents to acknowledge that a child’s reading experience is much more than the reading book which comes home from school. It is reading, sharing and listening to a wide and varied range of genres for real enjoyment.

 

Did you know?

If you read just one book a day to your child, they will have read 1825 books by their 5th birthday; every day counts - every book counts.

Expectations for Home Reading:

 

  • Read regularly- It only has to be a short period of time and sometimes it could be you reading to your child or them reading to a teddy. During these times ensure to discuss the text and ask a few questions about what they have read. We encourage children to re-read their books several times to build their decoding skills, fluency, comprehension and ability to read with expression.

  • Update Reading Records- After reading, update the yellow reading record with what you have read and how they did. Was there a specific sound that was tricky or a word they did not know? Your comments are really important as these are used as part of our evidence for when we level children’s reading ability.

  • Have a book bag- Ensure that your child has their named book bag in school every day. Due to timetable constraints your child may not complete their individual reading on the same day each week so we ask that book bags are always available to support us to read with children as and when we can. It also enables us to provide additional reading opportunities should time allow it.

  • Wider Reading- Please encourage children to read their own books alongside their school books as well as encourage reading whenever it is happening- even if it is looking at a menu when you are having a meal at a restaurant. A wide variety of text types is essential to supporting children in becoming successful readers with a life-long love of reading.

  • Keep reading fun- We want our children to develop a love of reading and engage with the opportunities provided of them. If this means you share the load and read a page each or sometimes you read to them then this is absolutely fine. Remember to speak to your child’s class teacher if you need any support with engaging your child with reading.

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Here is a great website link giving some advice on supporting your child with reading and discussing what they read.

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https://ourfp.org/supporting-rah/book-chat-reading-with-your-child/

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Useful documents and information:

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School Information-

Please see the attached documents for more information about reading and expectations at Paulton Infant School.

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National Curriculum-

For further information on Reading and English in the Early Years and National Curriculum, follow these links:​

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Useful Websites-

Some of our Favourite Authors

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Online Books (eBooks)

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Recommended Apps

  • Teach your Monster to Read

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