KS2 Reading
Reading at St. Alban’s
At St. Alban’s Catholic Primary School we endeavour to ensure children are equipped with the skills to enable them to read with confidence, fluency and understanding. Our ultimate aim is to provide children with the competence and strategies required for them to become fully literate adults who can achieve a lifetime of enjoyment through reading.
Children are taught to read using a range of appropriate strategies and skills that take into account individual learning needs, levels of development and interests. Reading is given a high profile throughout school from Foundation Stage to Year 6.
We seek to provide a range of different and stimulating opportunities to encourage and engage children in reading, including
- Home – school partnerships
- One-to one reading with an adult
- Shared Reading
- Guided Reading
- Independent Reading
- Learning within a literacy-rich environments
- Cross-curricular opportunities to read, including through ICT and computing
- Reading in the wider environment
In Foundation Stage, children are introduced to phonics using the Read Write Inc. (RWI) programme. The children progress through this scheme throughout Key Stage 1. Children are grouped through regular assessment to ensure the direct teaching matches individual learning needs.
If assessments identify any gaps in learning catch up programmes are implemented, and may include pockets of intensive support and focused home school partnerships. The Fresh Start programme is used to support and, where appropriate consolidate learning in Key Stage 2 – especially in Years 5 and 6
As children master the technical aspects of phonics and are equipped with necessary reading skills to attempt to read unknown words, greater emphasis is given to comprehension skills. From Year 2 children’s comprehension of what they are reading, and the key skills of retrieval, inference and deduction are taught more discretely using our Reading Detective scheme.
Read Write Inc. and Reading Detective's compliment the school’s core reading scheme, Oxford Reading Tree, the structured reading materials and scheme is supplemented by a range of ‘real’ books which broaden the reading menu on offer. The range of books and genre available ensures there is something for everyone. Titles are chosen not simply to consolidate learning, but to broaden our children’s reading experience. We encourage children across school to read books both within school and at home and to take notice of the written word around them.
Ultimately we aim to create a rich literary environment where children are both encouraged and allowed to develop as confident readers, able to form their own opinions and make their own reading preference choices. We have a large newly refurbished library stocked with a range of fiction and non-fiction books that children can take home to read for pleasure. Children from every class have access to dedicated reading areas where they can read independently in a comfortable and enriching environment.