Intent

At Rockmount Primary School, reading is a top priority and is a key driver for our curriculum. We aim to foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing our children to a range of literature across all areas of the curriculum.

It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently and with confidence in order to support them moving to the secondary phase of their education.

We therefore intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop: knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; an appreciation and love of reading; knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills. We are committed to providing vocabulary rich reading material.

It is also our intention for children to be read to every day. Teachers reading aloud, modelling appropriate use of story language and reading with expression to children, helps to improve their understanding of different story structures, to enthuse them with a love of books, inspire them as writers but most importantly, make reading fun.

We understand the importance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills, and so we want to encourage a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to understand how to support their child’s reading at home.

Implementation

• The systematic teaching of phonics has a high priority throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Phonics is taught daily using the programme 'Read, Write Inc.' to all children in the Foundation Stage, Year 1 and Year 2. In addition, those who did not pass the phonics screening in Year 1 are monitored throughout their education and receive phonics intervention where necessary.
• Staff systematically teach learners the relationship between sounds and the written spelling patterns, or graphemes, which represent them.
• Phonics is delivered in ability-group format, because it enables staff to ensure application across subjects, embedding the process in a rich literacy environment for early readers. This can involve cross year group delivery.
• Timely intervention is planned for those children who are working below expected levels as soon as needs are identified.
• Once children are confidently reading, they move on to the school’s guided reading programme.  This generally happens when pupils are in Year 2.
• The school ensures all texts are accurately matched to pupil ability, as books used for guided reading are graded to ensure progression and challenge for all children.
• High quality key texts are carefully selected by teachers with the knowledge of how they link to other areas of the curriculum. 
• All children from Year 3 up take part in daily whole class reading sessions. All teachers use these to introduce pupils to a range of genres and to teach a range of techniques, which enable children to comprehend the meaning of what they read.
• All classrooms have their own class reading areas. Within these areas, books are well organised, so children are able to select books based on genre.  The children are encouraged to read and talk about the material with their peers and teachers. Within these areas, there are also book recommendations, author information and child led book reviews.
• Progression is established through formative and summative assessment and is reported on half-termly.
• Any children not making the expected progress have 1:1 or small group intervention using bespoke packages.

Impact

• Pupils will enjoy reading across a range of genres.
• Pupils of all abilities will be able to succeed in all reading lessons.
• Pupils will use a range of strategies for decoding words, not solely relying on phonics.
• Pupils will have a good knowledge of a range of authors.
• Pupils will be ready to read in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.
• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home, and contribute regularly to home-school records.