Red Oak Primary School, Lowestoft

Reading at Red Oak Primary

We value Reading at Red Oak extremely highly, and we take pride in the teaching of reading, and in developing reading for pleasure within our school community. Our children see the adults here as teachers of reading, and as teachers that read for pleasure.

The teaching of reading at Red Oak starts in our Nursery, where children are taught the sounds needed to read simple words. We use RWI Phonics to teach reading to children from Nursery to Year 2. Each child from Reception to Year 2 is assessed every six weeks and grouped according to their phonic ability. Groups for teaching phonics are kept as small as possible, and each child has a home reading book that is matched to their phonic ability. Once a child has completed the RWI programme they are taught in their year group class for English.

Children in Year 3 and 4 who have not completed the RWI Phonic programme are taught reading in small RWI phonic groups, according to their ability, and they are also assessed every six weeks.

Children in Year 5 and 6 who still need support with learning to read are taught in small RWI Fresh Start groups.

Children who are taught in class have access to high quality texts that cover an ambitious range and breadth of classic literature, poetry, engaging picture books, and texts that challenge the children.

All classes have very well stocked reading areas, and these are regularly checked, and updated if necessary. We have two libraries in our school. One contains the Oxford University Press reading scheme that we use; RWI Book Bag Books, Fireflies, Project X, Reflect, Graphic Novels, Chucklers, Greatest Stories, Hero Academy, Treetops, Snapdragons, In Fact, Story Sparks, All Stars and Myths and Legends. Our other library contains high quality wider reading books, both fiction and non- fiction, as well as subject specific reading material.

Children are encouraged to read daily at home with their parents and we have reward systems in place to acknowledge their efforts, we award dojo points, golden tickets, reading award badges, and book tokens. Children that do not read regularly at home are listened to at school, reading records reflect how often children are listened to in school, and we aim for every child to be heard every day.

Teachers read to their class every day, from a book they have chosen to read to the children, this is in addition to the text they are reading in English lessons. These texts are chosen so that children broaden their knowledge of other cultures, people and places, and these texts give the children the opportunity to explore different beliefs, values and attitudes, as well as build up a reservoir of linguistic experiences upon which to draw. As the children progress through the school there is a shift from learning to read, to reading to learn, and teachers encourage children to read across all subjects in search of information, instructions or for research purposes. We encourage the children to use the internet for research and teach them how to skim and scan web pages for information.

Teachers spend time talking to their class about their own reading experiences, and sharing with the children their enjoyment of reading. This helps develop a reading for pleasure culture across the school as children see their teachers as readers as well as teachers of reading. Staff meetings have regular updates on reading, and teachers and support staff receive reading CPD fortnightly in meetings, and staff are asked to feedback on the impact of certain reading strategies used in class following CPD.

We hold regular Share sessions which gives parents an opportunity to visit their child in class and share stories with them, we also hold ‘Seeing is Believing’ walks for parents so that they can visit and see how their children are taught to read. Every September we hold a meeting for the parents of Reception children and we share with them how we teach the children to read, and each parent receives a RWI home reading and writing kit so that their children can practise at home. We have regular author visits, story telling visits and theatre companies to school so that the children can meet real authors, and so that the stories the children have already heard or read come to life.

At Red Oak we know that if you read you succeed!