St Patrick's Catholic Primary School
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Intent
At Saint Patrick’s Primary School we aim to provide all children with a high-quality education in English that will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively. With Reading, phonics will be emphasised in the early teaching of reading until children have reached a standard that allows them to access texts independently and confidently. Reading will be a central part of all curricula areas supporting the learning that children undertake. It is our belief that Reading is an enabler to unlock life- long learning.
All children will read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.
Implementation:
At Saint Patrick’s Catholic Primary School children begin their reading journey using the letters and sounds phonics scheme supported by resources from RWI. All classes have reading record files which are used to record how often children read to an adult in school, at home and how often they are changing their books. Focus children are heard read at least daily by an adult. Adults within the class support the children to choose appropriate text types for the children supported by the RWI phonic appropriate books as well as the banded books in our library. These books represent a considerable financial investment in reading in our school. Phonics is an integral part of our reading journey and it is covered within the next section.
Each class has a reading area, complete with a range of age appropriate books. This is topped up termly by visits from the ELS book bus. During these visits, the children have an opportunity to choose self-interests books and books for pleasure. As a school, we have assigned visit times to our local library and the librarians make us aware of county led reading challenges and initiatives.
Across the school, each class has an age appropriate reading challenge and prizes are awarded to children as soon as they complete their challenge. We are acutely aware of the community which we serve and so we ensure that at Christmas each child receives a book of their own to read at home and treasure.
As appropriate whole class guided reading sessions take place daily using high quality texts and supported by resources from Mastery English. Children are challenged with their thinking to ensure a deep understanding of the text and skills they are learning.
Our reading approach in KS1 includes guided reading three times a week and this is further developed in KS2 with sessions on reciprocal reading, which is explained in the next section.
Impact
By the end of each year group children will have acquired the skills needed to move on to the next stage of their education. The vast majority of children will achieve well in the Year 1 Phonics screening check and be able to access appropriate books independently. At the end of every seasonal term children complete a reading test, and there will be appropriately set targets for each year group in place. Support is put in place to ensure that children who are not meeting the targets are supported to thrive. It is expected that every child will leave Saint Patrick’s with a good level of reading to enable them to access the next stage of their education. Our ultimate aim is to encourage a love of reading that will be carried on with them as they move to the next phase of their learning.
Our ultimate aims to secure impact are as follows: