Teaching Reading at Wicklea

At Wicklea, we aim to develop a lifelong love of reading in our children. Pupils are given a wide range of reading opportunities each week to develop their reading strategies. Throughout each term, they will read regularly with an adult as well as being read to by their teacher. They will increase their knowledge of texts and reading skills through guided reading sessions and whole-class reading comprehension lessons, which are linked to various genres and topics. Children are also encouraged to read regularly at home, sharing their school books with their adults.

Accelerated Reader- (link - https://ukhosted98.renlearn.co.uk/6218106/ )

Each year group's individual reading books will be taken from levelled accelerated reader books. Every other term, pupils will take a star reader test to determine which level books they should be reading. They will be given a ZPD level range to select books from.

As soon as a pupil has finished their book, they take a quiz about the book online. If pupils are achieving well in their quizzes, they will be moved up the levels within their ZPD range.

Guided reading -

Guided reading provides children with the opportunity to discuss books and text extracts in groups, which we believe is integral to developing their comprehension skills. Each term, your child will take part in at least 2 guided reading sessions with their teacher and a group of 4-5 other children. In these sessions, children will learn how to answer a range of questions both orally and written, in line with the objectives of their year group. The purpose of these groups is to aid discussion between peers, with support from the teacher, in order to increase the children’s understanding of age-appropriate texts and comprehension questions, while supporting them with how to structure answers.

Whole class comprehension -

Regular comprehensions are taught as part of English. These lessons support children in transferring their oral understanding of a book into a written explanation. These may or may not be linked to a specific genre or text. In these lessons:

comprehensions will be published or written by teachers,
pupils will have opportunities to apply reading strategies they have learned,
comprehension questions will cover some or all of the specific reading objectives and cover a range of text types, fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Children will also be tested using standardised comprehensions 3 times a year.

Individual reading-

When hearing readers, we ensure the atmosphere is purposeful and that the child feels comfortable. There are dedicated focused reading times for all children across the school, with targeted readers identified and listened to more frequently. Reading diaries are used as a key tool for communicating reading with parents and we encourage parents to use these too.

Whole class reading -

In order to foster a love of reading, the children are read to regularly by their teacher. Each term, children will be involved in selecting the book they will share during daily whole-class reading sessions. These books will be chosen from a range of genres and text types in order to reflect the interests of individual classes.

Library -

Our library is a calm and comfortable space, which the children can enjoy while developing their passion for reading. Across the week, each year group has a designated lunch period to visit the library to browse, read, loan, or return books with the support of our library monitors. Each term, the children will also visit this space with their class to share a story and explore the range of fiction and non-fiction books it contains.