Reading in Nursery
Our Ash Tree reading journey begins with our youngest readers in F1 through an introduction to phonological awareness. Through discrete phonics sessions, exploration and play in our Early Years provision, our early readers discover sounds, begin to discriminate between them and explore rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. Combined with this, they listen to, join in with and retell carefully chosen stories, rhymes, poems and songs to develop their story telling; laying the foundations for a love of reading that is nurtured along the journey. Ash Tree readers develop their oracy skills through modelling in role-play, sustained shared interactions and building of shared verbal sentences through planned talk experiences. Throughout the Summer term, the focus shifts towards phoneme and grapheme correspondence as the children begin daily Read, Write, Inc. phonics sessions where they learn single letter sounds, how to blend them together with ‘Fred Talk’ and play ‘Fred Rhythms and Games’.
Reading in Reception
As our readers progress to F2, their phonological skills are developed through the introduction of blending for reading using linked story books and segmenting for spelling. Alongside daily RWInc phonic sessions, our readers participate in daily ‘Talk Through Stories’ sessions. These are centered around the importance of ‘talk’ and use carefully chosen texts to unpick ambitious vocabulary and strengthen comprehension of texts through systematic structures and modelling.
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Key Stage One
As our Ash Tree Readers move up to Key Stage 1, their daily RWInc phonic sessions continue with their grapheme recognition, word reading and fluency being regularly assessed. This enables teaching to be responsive and targeted in their approach to developing competent readers.
Talk Through Stories sessions also continue, enabling our readers to build on their existing comprehension skills whilst deepening their understanding of character development, traditional story conventions and inference. As our readers’ confidence blossoms, verbal responses progress to written ones and they are introduced to a variety of question domains that provide opportunities to practise key reading skills such as prediction, summarising and connecting. In Year 2, our readers move towards a whole class reading approach: Read to Succeed. Each reader has their own text and an accompanying comprehension booklet used in unison. This model exposes all readers to a varied and ambitious diet of literature and promotes reading aloud from all.
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Key Stage Two
Throughout Key Stage 2, our Read to Succeed model is continued and through the use of a variety of strategies, fluency and more complex comprehension strategies are developed. Being read to is still a key feature of the school day as is the promotion of higher level vocabulary and any opportunity to discuss style and authorial style. The journey of an Ash Tree reader engenders interest and enthusiasm for vocabulary from the earliest stages, increases confidence in decoding and is ultimately driven by a love of reading which is a vital component to preparing our children for lives of choice and opportunity.
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From our earliest of readers to our eldest, there are many more opportunities to foster a love of reading. Every Ash Tree reader:
- Visits one of our school libraries at least once a week
- Uses a voting station to choose which titles they want to share together in class
- Takes home a reading book linked to their reading ability
- Borrows an ‘Ash Tree recommended read’ from their classroom each week to discover new and exciting authors
- Has access to books at all breaktimes and reading buddies
- Is read to every day by their class teacher
- Has designated reading time every day outside of their reading lessons to
- Strives to read 5 times each week at home
