The Implementation of reading throughout St Alban’s
English teaching at St Alban’s exposes our children to well-chosen high quality texts and rich language models which give them the skills, knowledge and confidence to be engaged and inspired readers.
Our aim is for every child at St Alban’s to leave our school as a fluent reader who has developed reading skills that allow them to understand, analyse, and most importantly appreciate a wide range of texts.
We use SoundsWrite to teach phonics from reception to build early fluency, supported by phonetically decodable books so that children can build their fluency at the right pace for them.
In Key Stage 2, reading is taught weekly in our English lessons (It is integral to our ‘WRITER’ sequence) as well as focused ‘reading for meaning’ sessions, where our six reading skills are embedded.
Predicting Detecting Connecting Understanding Questioning Summarising
Children in year 3 onwards benefit from the ‘Accelerated Reader’ programme, which allows children more freedom to choose the books they are interested in. It is an invaluable way for teachers to monitor all pupils’ reading development throughout school and checks comprehension and understanding in addition to their decoding skills.
As well as accelerated reader, progression maps are used to ensure reading develops appropriately at each stage and children are tracked at various stages in the year to make sure they are making sufficient process. Teachers are ambitious with the content that they deliver and support is then given to those who need extra support to reach age-related expectations.
