Reading at Cumberland
Reading is a fundamental skill that supports children’s learning across the whole curriculum and helps a child reach their full potential. At Cumberland, we aim for our children to become life-long, confident and reflective readers who love and enjoy reading widely and often.
Click on the links below to watch Mrs Dilger, our English Lead, explaining what reading at Cumberland is like, and how you can support your child at home.
Click above to watch a short video explaining the basics of phonics
Reading is a fundamental skill that supports children’s learning across the whole curriculum and helps a child reach their full potential. At Cumberland, we aim for our children to become life-long, confident and reflective readers who love and enjoy reading widely and often.
Aims
- Teach a high quality systematic synthetic phonics programme so that children become effective ‘word readers’.
- Enable children to read confidently, fluently and with understanding through a variety of discreet and cross-curricular learning opportunities.
- Provide access to a print-rich environment throughout the school to widen the children’s vocabulary and stimulate their interest in reading.
- Provide early readers with a high quality range of decodable books for Home Reading.
- Provide a wide variety of high quality, inspiring and exciting texts (including songs) that children love and enjoy.
- Develop children’s interest in words and their meanings to cultivate their growing vocabulary.
- Develop strong partnerships with parents/carers to enable them to best support their children when reading at home.
Teaching and Learning approaches
Cumberland teaching strategies include whole-class teaching, guided group work and one-to-one support.
Teaching and learning in the Foundation Stage is based on the area of learning Communication, Language and Literacy from The Early Years and Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework. In Key Stage 1, teaching and learning of reading is based on the 2014 National Curriculum for Reading. Children are assessed against the Early Literacy Goals and national age-related expectations. Pupil provision is personalised to the needs of the child through differentiated planning. Children in need of further support are identified through ongoing assessment and receive targeted reading support.
Phonics
Phonics is a priority in the teaching of reading at Cumberland. Children cannot become highly engaged in reading if reading words is a struggle. The application of phonics is taught as the primary strategy in the teaching of reading. We have developed our own internal scheme ‘Hear it, Say it, Read it, Write it’. This broadly follows ‘Letters and Sounds’ from Little Cumberland Pre-School through to Year 2 with ‘in school’ specially developed resources that also include the 2014 National Curriculum programmes of study for Year 1 and Year 2. This programme allows our children to become competent and confident ‘word readers’. Phonics is taught daily in small differentiated groups. Those children that require extra support may complete a further phonics activity later in the day to reinforce their learning from the morning session. Games and ICT programs to consolidate children’s phonic knowledge are used at other parts of the school day. Assessment is ongoing and recorded at least half termly on the school phonics tracker. This assessment informs future planning and identifies children that may require further support to become confident ‘word readers’. (see separate phonics policy for further details on teaching of Phonics)
Guided Reading and Shared Reading
All classes teach discrete, 20 minute daily guided reading sessions or shared reading sessions. Planning for these sessions is aligned with the National Curriculum reading expectations.
Guided Reading
In guided reading sessions, teachers and teaching assistants work with groups of children who demonstrate similar reading behaviours and can access similar levels of texts. Texts for guided reading are carefully chosen at the instructional level which the children can read. In guided reading, children apply previously taught phonics skills and learn other reading strategies to read new texts. KS1 Children not working directly with an adult will be completing another reading task independently or enjoying a book of their own choice. EYFS children not working directly with an adult have shared reading, phonics games or singing with an LSA. All children will have the opportunity to read 1:1 with an adult at least weekly during Guided Reading.
Shared Reading
Sometimes, teachers may choose to deliver shared reading sessions whole class in place of a small group guided reading session. This gives children an opportunity to explore a trickier text in more depth and stimulates discussion around language and literary features.
Reading for pleasure
A wide range of high quality poems, stories and songs are shared in class on a daily basis. We also have developed a ‘Cumberland Collection’ which is a set of’ books for each year group. All of these texts are chosen specifically to elicit different responses from the children. These texts might enrich projects or expose children to other experiences beyond their own e.g different cultures. Sharing these stories, poems and songs develops the children’s language comprehension, knowledge and vocabulary but importantly, also fosters a love and a passion for reading and language. Each classroom has an inviting reading area containing a range of high quality, accessible books that stimulate and challenge children in their reading choices. Each classroom also has a selection of books for each project provided by the School Library Service. Library time is used for a variety of purposes including storytelling, research and borrowing books. Children are able to take a weekly ‘Bedtime story book’ home each week to share with their family. We also have close links with the local Beddow library and ensure our children in Key Stage One have the opportunity to visit the library at least twice a year. Every year we ensure that there are a range of events to promote a love of reading within the school including but not limited to: World Book day, author visits and book awards.
Assessment of reading
Assessment is ongoing and we use a range of assessment tools to determine a child’s strengths and areas for improvement in reading. As a child progresses from Pink through to Orange book bands, assessment is done informally through reading decodable books either through 1:1 reading or in Guided Reading Sessions. Verbal questioning to assess comprehension and the use of the Phonics Tracker supports a teacher in determining whether a child is ready to progress to the next level. For a child who may be ready to progress to Turquoise, a range of written and verbal comprehension activities such as RM Benchmarking or child conferencing with real books are used to assess whether a child is ready to progress. Following assessments children may move to a different book-band or, should a child not be making expected progress, support will be put in place through interventions, for example: 1:1 readers, Catch Up or Better Reading. At the end of the year, children in Year R are assessed against the Early Literacy and Communication and Language Goals and children in Year 1 and 2 are assessed against the national age-related expectations. Children in Year 1 are also required to undertake a Phonics Screening test and children also complete a written reading comprehension as extra supporting evidence. Children in Year 2 are required to undertake the End of Key Stage 1 Reading SATS paper. At the end of Key Stage One, children are also assessed against the English reading framework from the National Curriculum to establish whether they have met age related expectations. Teachers provide a range of reading evidence to support their judgements for each child which will include conferencing from a variety of real, rich texts or written comprehensions. Pre-key stage standards are used to assess those children who are working below the standard of the national curriculum assessments at the end of the Key Stage.