At Dersingham, we believe that reading is an essential life skill and is key for academic success. Therefore, we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers.

 At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise imaginative stories and thought-provoking texts, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, picture books and film.

Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future lines of study and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole school approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or higher.

 We have high expectations of all children and we encourage children to challenge themselves, persevere and pursue success, always ‘reaching for the stars.’

Guided comprehension is delivered to the whole class. All classes follow a structured 4-day approach to reading activities. Sessions are interactive and teachers facilitate speaking and listening opportunities, with children working independently. Pupil engagement in lessons is promoted through regular use of think-pair-share, responses on mini-whiteboards and collaborative tasks. The main focus in these lessons is on interaction, dialogue and assessment for learning strategies.

High quality short texts and passages are chosen, appropriate to the expectations of the year group or ability of children, and teachers use this to model the application of the agreed reading skills (Predicting, Questioning, Clarifying, Summarizing, Thinking aloud and Visualizing) Children are taught to identify words/phrases they don’t understand and strategies to fix breakdown in meaning. In addition, they are taught to relate the text to themselves, previous reading experiences and the world around them.
 

Further to modelled sessions, children have the opportunity to read texts with greater independence and apply their skills when responding to the three levels of questioning (Looking, Thinking and Clue) More complex questions are evaluated with more able children and teachers model how to refine answers to a high standard. All children take part in small group or paired activities, which enables teachers to elicit the needs of children individually and identify areas for future development.

At Dersingham, we believe that regular reading at home is an important tool in developing reading skills. Phonics decodable books are sent home mainly in key stage one  and a wide selection of banded books are used in key-stage two. Children, whose reading skills and comprehension are solid, are exposed to longer and more challenging books (fiction and non- fiction) to ensure that children experience a wide breadth of reading opportunities across different genres.

We have a process of monitoring to ensure standards and this includes, observations, performance management and learning walks. Assessment for Learning techniques are incorporated in every Reading lesson, including feedback and appropriate marking. Each half term, Year Groups undertakes a formative assessment, the results of which are not published, but used for future planning and to highlight any individual learning gaps. Teachers make termly judgements for each pupil against year group expectations and bring this information to Pupil Progress meetings, alongside updates on intervention groups. We report the standards for individual pupils at the end of Reception, Year 2 and Year 6 and for pupils in Year 1 who take the Phonics screening check.

By the time children leave Dersingham, they are fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock and enhance their knowledge and understanding of all subjects on the curriculum.