Reading

Vision

Kader Academy aims to develop little people who feel safe and happy. We want them to develop a strong sense of pride, not only in themselves, but of their local area and its heritage. We value the importance of strong relationships with our families and our sense of community is at the heart of all we do. We know that our diversity is our strength and we will strive to ensure that the children’s compassion and kindness makes the world a better place. We will inspire curiosity through engaging experiences that promote a profound love of learning. We want them to know that their learning knows no bounds and with self-belief and determination, they can achieve the impossible.

Our English vision is to ensure that all children within our care, regardless of their starting point or their home language, develop a love of the English language, with a proficient command over its use. We want our children to see themselves as both competent readers, writers and speakers who aspire to accomplish amazing things.

Intent

At Kader, we want to inspire a generation of pupils who both CAN read and WANT to read! We aim to foster a love for reading, develop proficient reading skills, and promote a deep understanding of texts across all subjects. Our carefully- planned curriculum is designed to inspire curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking through a wide range of high-quality texts that reflect the diversity of our community and the wider world. The texts chosen are designed to be both mirrors, reflecting our pupils within the pages, and windows, enabling pupils to gain a compassionate insight into the lives of others. We aim to equip our pupils not only with the essential skills to comprehend, analyse, and evaluate a variety of literary genres and informational texts, but also with tools to help us be better, more respectful global citizens.

Implementation

Throughout school, from Nursery to Year 6, books are the backbone of our English curriculum. The children work through a carefully-crafted book spine: a selection of books in each year group chosen for their high-quality and their ambitious language. Vocabulary development is central to our curriculum design and the selections we make expose our pupils to a rich language bank. These books inspire both reading and writing activities each half-term, with texts from other genres used to supplement and extend. Pupils also have a poetry spine- a bank of poems over the course of the year to study, perform and enjoy.

Many of the successful strategies used within our Read Write Inc sessions (such as teacher-modelling, repeated reading) are built in to our daily whole class reading sessions, which last for approximately 30 minutes each day. Initially, the children will be introduced to a text and will read repeatedly to support their developing automaticity (how ‘automatic’ their word-reading is), their fluency (how quickly they read) and their prosody (the voice used to read the text aloud, demonstrating their understanding).

Once the children are beginning to gain in confidence with the text, as a means of deepening their understanding, we use the acronym VIPERS across school. These are the six key areas of reading comprehension the children need to be adept at utilising in order to gain a full understanding of what they are reading.

Orally, during the session, the pupils will employ an array of these skills within one lesson. During the independent task, the pupils will tackle one or two focus areas, completing tasks designed to exercise specific reading skills. This may also be done through drama or Art.

Pupils will be assessed in their reading development through a variety of means, both formative and summative. This includes the use of:

On-the- spot assessment in lessons
Accelerated Reader (quizzes designed to see how much of their reading book has been understood)
Star Reader- a half termly test undertaken by pupils which gives a reading age and suitable book level
Pixl assessments undertaken once per term, highlighting key areas of strength and development for each pupil.

The assessment data is collated to give a full picture of pupil progress and our skilled and responsive staff plan future lessons accordingly. Swift intervention is planned for and delivered to those pupils who may be finding an area of their reading difficult.

Pupils have access to full and comprehensive libraries, filled with both current literature and the classics. Within their classrooms, pupils have access to shelves containing magazines, newspapers, graphic novels, poetry, non-fiction and a wide range of fictions texts recommended to their year group. Within the central library, pupils can select a book for home using their reading level as a guide, knowing that that will be most suited to their reading ability. Once complete, children can quiz on their book using the Accelerated Reader system. Pupils in Y4 and above additionally have access to Reading Plus- a self-led programme designed to increase the reading speed and stamina of our pupils, as well as giving them access to a wealth of additional texts. Author visits are an integral part of our reading for pleasure culture and pupils meet, both in person and online, a range of authors in order to increase engagement. Library visits also take place throughout the year.

Reading however goes beyond the confines of our English lessons; it is central to all we do and therefore our pupils are immersed in text throughout their school day. Pupils will select class novels together, complete reading scrapbooks to generate book talk within the classroom, perform poems to classes, use reading as a stimulus for work across the curriculum….the list goes on!

Impact

Through thorough assessment and responsive teaching, pupils get a comprehensive reading diet, in which all of our pupils can thrive. Although our excellent reading results are something to be exceptionally proud of, as we believe that reading is key to all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied magical worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres cultures and styles is enhanced. As a Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, we aspire that children 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 learning and all areas of the curriculum. We aim for pupils to relate their reading experiences to their own personal development, developing an empathy for characters and making links to their own behaviours.

Year group overview:

Year 1