Reading

At Nether Kellet, we firmly believe that teaching a child to read is one of the most important things we can teach your child to do. Throughout the primary school journey, we teach pupils all the basic skills needed to enable a child to read independently. We want your child to love reading – and to read for enjoyment. This is why we work hard to make sure children develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

Reading is obviously a crucial skill to use across the curriculum. Where children are reading from books or the internet for research purposes for example, teachers direct children as much as possible to content that is appropriate for their reading ability. This may include specific websites that children access via QR codes or typing or copying into the search engine.

We place a high value on reading and enthusing the children about books.  All the children spend time in the school library at least once a week and choose books from the library to take home along with their reading book.  We also hold regular reading events such as World Book Day activity days, inviting parents in to read with the children, buddied reading between older and younger children and visits from authors, poets and story tellers.  We have a reading shack in our playground, meaning that children can visit to read at playtimes and both parents and children can swap books from the shack.

What Reading Books Will My Child Bring Home?

Children in EYFS and Year 1 will read books which are closely matched to what they have been learning in their phonics lessons. Children should be encouraged to read these to an adult at home.

As children move towards age related expectations in Year 2 and beyond, they will be given a colour banded book matched to their reading ability. These will range from early readers to shorter chapter books and longer novels aimed at providing them with a rich and wide diet of reading material.  Children can be encouraged to either read these to an adult or read independently.

In addition to these independent reading books, children they may also bring home a second or third reading book of their own choice. This is to develop reading for enjoyment and we encourage parents of younger children to read these books with their child. The level of the text in these books may mean that developing readers cannot access them independently. Where children are reading for pleasure with their free choice reader or books from home, these can be any text, fiction or non-fiction. They may be a book that is easier to read than their reading book or a book that is more challenging to be shared with an adult.

At Nether Kellet, each child is expected to read at home daily, whether that is to an adult (for developing readers) or independently (for fluent readers). Class based staff aim to listen to every child read every week and will aim to listen to struggling readers even more frequently.

When you are reading with your child, it is always helpful to ask them some questions. Some example questions for each key stage can be found below.

Guided Reading

All children in school are taught reading skills through ‘Guided Reading’ sessions where they work with their teachers on focused reading activities. Whilst these sessions may be primarily focused on the use and application of phonics for our younger children (Rec & Yr 1), older children begin to develop skills of comprehension, inference and deduction, retrieval skills etc. Guided reading groups are ability based and teachers select texts which aim to reinforce a child’s level of development whilst extending them to learn new skills.  The books used in these lessons are usually slightly above the level of their independent reading book.

Please see below for the Key Skills in Reading document.

Shared Reading

Every fortnight the children from the KS2 classes share books with the children from Reception and KS1. This is a lovely opportunity for the children to enjoy books together, for the younger children to read their reading books to the older children and the older children to read books to the younger children. This sharing of books contributes to the children’s love of books and reading and, for the younger children, they have excellent role models as readers among the older children. Meanwhile the older children realise just how far they have come with their own reading since they started school themselves.