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How we support Reading

At Park Grove, we aim for all children to be enthusiastic and critical readers and to read for both enjoyment and information.  We teach children a range of strategies to access texts as required by the 2014 National Curriculum and we identify cross-curricular links to teach reading skills in a meaningful context.  Throughout their time at Park Grove, children will be exposed to a wide and exciting range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama texts by a variety of authors and from a variety of cultures.  We aim to enable all children to read with confidence, fluency and above all to foster a love of books and reading that will continue throughout Primary school and beyond.

 

Home Readers and Bookworms

In EYFS and KS1, children begin to read with ‘book banded’ home reading books which are phonically regular and so support the phonics teaching that happens during class time – click here to see how Phonics is taught at Park Grove.  We have a range of high quality home reading books from the ‘Collins Big Cat’ and ‘Oxford Bug Club’ series which are sent home with each child every week. We encourage families to read regularly at home and ask parents and carers to complete a couple of entries in their child’s Reading Record each week.  Adults in school will also make comments in Reading Records each week based on each child’s participation in guided or individual reading sessions.  As children become more confident in their reading, they will progress through the book band colours until they are considered ready to become free readers and to choose their own home reading books from their class bookshelves or the school library.

 

In KS2, children are also encouraged to read regularly at home but in Years 5 and 6, we ask the children themselves to complete an additional entry in their Reading Records as a homework task.  Each month, teachers will appoint a Bookworm of the Month from their class based on their Reading Records and the Bookworms will be presented with a certificate in assemblies and will have their photograph displayed on the Bookworm board in the foyer – see our current Bookworms here.

 

Guided Reading

All children in school take part in Guided Reading sessions with an adult each week.  Guided Reading is an instructional approach that involves a teacher or teaching assistant working with a small group of children who demonstrate similar reading skills and can all read similar levels of texts. The texts we choose offer challenges and provide opportunities for children to expand their reading strategies but should also enable them to read with some fluency.

 

Our School Library

We have a well-stocked school library run by Mrs Embleton and each class has a timetabled visit to the library each week to borrow books.

 

Special Events and Celebrating Reading

 We celebrate World Book Day in March each year and activities have included a KS1 book character catwalk in the school hall, ‘drop everything and read’ assemblies and our oldest and youngest children sharing books together.