Reading

The context of our school

Mayfield is a unique all-through setting that accommodates over 1400 pupils. Our Primary Phase houses 538 pupils in total of whom, 2% have English as an additional language and 21% are pupil premium. 14% of our pupils have special educational with 2% of these pupils receiving EHCP provision. At Mayfield, it is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of background.

 

Phonics (reading and spelling)

At Mayfield, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, we strive to ensure that all children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Mayfield, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

 

Comprehension

At Mayfield, we value reading as a crucial life skill. It is our aim that by the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. We aim to provide our readers with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.

 

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:

 

  • sharing high-quality stories and poems

  • learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes

  • activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending

  • attention to high-quality language.

 

We endeavour to work alongside our on-site Nursery to ensure that our pupils are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

 

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

 

  • We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.

  • Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term. · We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:

  • Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.

  • Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

 

Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

 

  • Any child who needs additional practice has Keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.

  • We timetable phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 or 3 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace.

  • If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading/writing gaps.

 

  • In EYFS, we teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These:

  • are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children

  • use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids on pages 11–20 of ‘Application of phonics to reading’

  • are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.

  • Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

  • decoding

  • prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression

  • comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

  • In EYFS, these sessions start after the first 6 weeks. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.

  • In Year 1 and 2, we teach reading in this way but using a slightly different structure. Prosody and comprehension are targeted daily during whole class reading sessions and each day the class teacher or trained support staff member reads with a focused group of six children. We utilise the whole class reading sessions to expose children to a variety of different ‘Reading for pleasure’ books. These books are shared by the teacher/trained member of staff. The focus of these daily whole class reading sessions is for the teacher to share the text, model reading with prosody and develop pupils’ comprehension skills. Staff delivering these sessions focus on unpicking punctuation when reading aloud, identifying tricky words and words containing graphemes taught across the week. The text is read to and shared with the pupils, so that they can access it and allows them to focus on reading with fluency and expression. Once they are fluent and can imitate the teacher/skilled member of staff confidently, pupils are expected to answer questions about the text to showcase their understanding. Group reading practice sessions are taught daily and follow the same structure as EYFS.

  • We timetable phonics lessons/’catch up’ sessions for any child in Year 2 or 3 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace.

  • If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading/writing gaps.

 

Home reading

 

  • The decodable reading practice book is sent home as an eBook to ensure success is shared with the family.

  • Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.

  • An additional fully decodable reader of the same colour band is sent home with the pupils in addition to their eBook, so that they have a physical book to practice with. These texts only include graphemes previously taught and not ones that the pupils are yet to be exposed to.

  • We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.

 

Ensuring consistency and pace of progress

 

  • Our aim is that every teacher in our school will have been trained to teach reading, so we have the same expectations of progress. We all aspire to use the same language, routines, and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load.

  • Weekly content grids map each element of new learning to each day, week, and term for the duration of the programme.

  • Lesson templates, Prompt cards and ‘How to’ videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.

  • The Reading Leader and SLT use Prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

 

Ensuring reading for pleasure

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002) ‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

 

  • We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at Mayfield and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.

  • We are prioritising the development of inviting book corner/displays in each classroom that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.

  • In Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.

  • Children from Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school.

  • As the children progress through the school, they are encouraged to write their own comments and keep a list of the books/authors that they have read.

 

The school library is made available for classes to use at protected times. Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of Reading for Pleasure events (book fairs, author visits and workshops, national events etc).

 

Impact

Assessment (EYFS, Y1, Y2 and Y3)

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it. · Assessment for learning is used:

 

  • Daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support

  • Weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings. · Summative assessment is used:

  • Every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.

  • By SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

 

Statutory assessment

 

  • Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.

  • Ongoing assessment for catch-up

  • Children who require ‘catch up’ phonics support in Year 2 to 6, are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.

Implementation

In addition to the catch-up sessions for any child in Years 3 to 6, needing further support with the application of phonics, shared reading sessions are delivered to Years 3-6 as part of daily English lessons.

These sessions are carefully planned using the English core text driver and concentrate on the five main reading skills – Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation and Summarising. Teachers across KS2 explicitly teach each of these skills through modelling and demonstrating to and with the children. Pupils are given opportunities to discuss, analyse and answer comprehensive questions linked to each of the five reading elements.

As well as whole class shared reading sessions, children across KS2 practice their decoding and fluency skills by reading on a 1:1 basis. Children read with an adult once every fortnight, which is recorded on a 1:1 reading record. Children read either their banded book or their chosen library book, if they are a free reader.

 

Destination Reader

Our current Y3 children are trialing a new reading programme. The programme, Destination Reader, is an approach to teaching reading in KS2. It involves daily sessions incorporating whole class modeling prior to the children applying these skills through partner work and independent reading.

The approach encompasses the key principles of effective reading provision and fully meets the requirements of the National Curriculum. It also builds a culture of reading for pleasure and purpose.

Destination reader covers all the expectations for the KS2 National Curriculum for reading: Word reading and breadth of reading is built on throughout the lessons with an explicit focus on understanding and engaging with texts. The programme blends a range of learning behaviours and reading strategies that, brought together, allow children to explore and understand texts independently, at a deeper level.

Once these learning behaviors have been embedded, the children learn 7 key reading strategies in turn which help them deepen their understanding of texts.

By initially concentrating on one strategy at a time, teachers can support and challenge children to develop their skills through high expectations of oral and written use of the strategies. The strategies are then combined as the children progress and applied to different forms of texts such as poetry and non-fiction. These strategies equip children with a robust toolkit to apply when reading across the curriculum and at home. The daily Destination Reader session combines metacognitive approaches with these behaviors and strategies through the following structure:

Over time the practice, learning behaviors, strategies and stems enshrined in the approach support the children’s independent learning across the curriculum. Coupled with Reading Snapshots, the approach to formative assessment devised to sit alongside Destination Reader, children and teachers feel empowered by the knowledge of which skills have been achieved and which skills are yet to be grasped – making progress clearer and better evidenced.

We are aiming to roll out this programme to the whole of KS2 by the end of the Summer Term.

Assessment

At the start of each academic year, all KS2 pupils are assessed on the 2019 ‘Toe by Toe’ reading test, which provides each child with a standardised reading age. This data is used to identify our lowest 20% of readers across the key stage. These children are then assessed using the Little Wandle termly phonic assessments so that catch-up sessions can be planned and delivered.

In addition to the ‘Toe by Toe’ assessment, all children across KS2 complete a running record review. These are conducted every half-term for all pupils reading banded books, so that progress can be measured. This information is recorded, tracked, and monitored on our reading assessment tracker.

As well as the running records and reading age-standardized scores, teachers use the children’s 1:1 reading records and reading journal outcomes to assist with their half-termly and end-of-year teacher assessment judgment. Teachers at Mayfield use an extensive evidence base to secure their end-of-year judgments so that assessment data is accurate and robust.

Implementation

In KS3, pupils participate in weekly Accelerated Reader (AR) lessons, which enable pupils to read to an adult, take quizzes on books they have read to assess their understanding, and spend time in our inviting library. As part of these sessions, the pupils complete a shared reading session, led by the teacher, based on an age-appropriate text.

Pupils are given opportunities to discuss key themes, explore characters and settings while identifying genre features across a wide range of literature. Shared reading tasks are designed so that pupils can develop their oracy skills in addition to their written comprehension.

As well as the Accelerated Reader programme, pupils in Years 7 & 8 attend daily Resilience sessions, which focus on developing reading and basic literacy skills. Pupils are allocated the first half-an-hour of each day to read, change books, share texts with an adult, and complete tasks that consolidate and embed basic literacy skills. Within this daily programme, pupils are given opportunities to read, analyse and discuss topical non-fiction articles, which promote an awareness of news and events happening around the world.

At present, two of our Y7 Resilience classes are trialing the Destination Reader programme that is currently being trialed in our Y3 Primary classes. These reading sessions have been adapted for KS3 pupils and have been implemented within daily Resilience sessions. As a school, we are working alongside practitioners from Hackney Primary Schools, which is facilitated by the Hackney Learning Trust.

 

Impact

Assessment

At the start of each term, pupils in Y7, 8, and 9 complete a Star Test, which generates a standardised reading age and a Zone of Proximal Development score. These scores are used to allocate colour ranges, which assist pupils in finding books matched to their reading ability. In addition to completing termly Star Tests, pupils are encouraged to complete quizzes once they have finished reading a book. These tests are analyzed by teachers and discussed with pupils so that scores lower than the 85% pass rate are addressed.

Pupils with reading ages below 12 years are targeted and added to our Resilience Catch Up Interventions. These pupils receive daily support, which is carefully planned to close the gap. This data is tracked throughout the academic year to monitor progress and attainment.

Believe.
Achieve.
Succeed.