Reading

At Laburnum Primary School, we prioritise reading across all aspects of the curriculum. By promoting text-rich teaching , we equip students to read fluently and comprehend texts relevant to every subject. Fluent readers who can independently comprehend a wide range of texts are prepared for success in their future learning.  

Teachers support pupils to read texts for meaning by providing them with questions, discussion topics and tasks that explore their understanding and response to texts. These ‘active’ reading habits that will equip pupils to independently tackle challenging texts later in life. 

Children’s reading ability determines how much they read. As teachers, we are committed to delivering high quality reading provision; if we can improve the teaching of reading, then we are likely to increase how much our students read for pleasure and engage in learning. 

Our work on reading in the classroom is fully supported through phonics and effective literacy development strategies, whole class/independent reading for pleasure built into the timetable and use of an inclusive, well-stocked library and classroom book stock. 

In all year groups, we use the Sounds Write scheme and approach to teaching reading and spelling. This is complemented with books from the Sounds-Write scheme in Early Years, Key Stage 1 and for pupils in Key Stage 2 where these are still required. There are four main concepts that the children learn through the Sounds Write programme:

• letters are symbols that represent sounds.

• sounds can be spelled using 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters.

• the same sound can be spelled in different ways.

• the same spelling can represent different sounds.

Through a mixture of segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation lessons, the children learn the code knowledge and apply it in whole words from the very beginning. With a focus on what the children can hear, all children can participate.