At Heber we are passionate about Reading and want to make sure that all our children develop a love of Reading and that every child leaves us as a critical reader.
Central to our approach is the teaching of systematic phonics using ‘Letters and Sounds’. Daily, discreet high quality teaching alongside effective assessment and tracking helps to ensure that children meet the ambitious reading targets that are set for them.
All of our classrooms feature bright, stimulating and inviting book corners for children to sit and read in and we regularly invest in high quality texts for the children. In our book corners you will often find children’s recommendations and reviews of their favourite books. By the time children leave us in Year 6 they have read many books by a wide range of significant authors.
Guided reading takes place every day. Children are asked to read high quality texts and show their understanding through drama, extended writing and reader’s theatre. We also ensure that throughout their time at school children regularly hear adults reading aloud.
Our reading curriculum is primarily delivered in two ways, through:
- ‘Guided Reading’
- Reading-focused lessons
During these sessions, children are taught the key skills of: retrieval; inference; structure; language choice; purpose/viewpoint and context.
At every stage of a child’s life, reading should be pleasurable and we believe that time should be devoted at school and home to ‘reading for pleasure’. Children have the opportunity to read books of their own choice, which they take home, read and discuss. This is key to the development and enjoyment of reading.
In Years 5 and 6, reading is taught through whole class lessons. Each child will receive a copy of the book being studied. Rich discussion, questioning, follow up tasks and pre-reading tasks form the basis for whole class reading.
Learning is planned in a cross curricular way and we routinely use books as our starting point for a topic. Using a high quality text as a basis for learning really engages the children and helps to develop quality writing as well as stimulating learning in other areas of the curriculum.