Intent

At Merrylands Primary School and Nursery, we want to foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing the children to a variety of literature across all curriculum areas. We believe reading opens a new world for children and gives them the opportunity to explore new ideas, visit new places, meet new characters and develop a better understanding of other cultures. It builds on children’s vocabulary, giving them the word power they need to become successful speakers and writers as well as confident readers.

Reading is a key life skill, and we strive to embed a culture of reading into the core of everything we do. Reading and quality literature is implicitly interwoven into our curriculum through the use of key texts to expose our children to various genres and famous authors as well as to enhance the variety of exciting topics that we teach.

The sharing of stories is central to enhancing our reading provision throughout school, so children can enjoy both reading and being read to as part of their daily learning. 

Implementation

The teaching of reading does not just focus on simply decoding the words on the page but also develops the children’s ability to read and understand a wide range of different texts, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, real world texts such as labels, captions, lists and environmental print. Competence in reading is the key to independent learning. It has a direct impact on progress in all areas of the curriculum and is crucial in developing children’s self-esteem, confidence and motivation.

Through explicit shared reading sessions as well as reading on a 1:1 basis and sharing texts across the curriculum, children will develop the following skills:

• to read aloud fluently and with expression
• to read for meaning
• to read a wide range of fiction, poetry and non-fiction material
• to use a range of strategies for reading
• to recognise vocabulary, grammar and literary devices in texts which can be used effectively in writing
• to read a text critically and know how to improve it

Reading tasks will develop children’s ability and confidence through a range of strategies including choral reading, echo reading, partner reading and independent reading.  Children will be actively encouraged to discuss the books that they read and recommend books they have read to their peers.

Reading books in Early Years and Key Stage One have been carefully matched to the phonics scheme, FFT Success For All Phonics and teachers are responsible for ensuring that children are taking home books appropriate to their reading level throughout the school. Teachers communicate with parents about children’s progress in reading through the use of the Home School Reading Record Books. 

All classes have a prominent book area displaying topic books as well as a bookcase with dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases and novels. Each child can also take a book home from the book corner to promote reading for pleasure.

Impact

Through our reading curriculum, we strive to promote a positive reading culture where books and the love of literature is both celebrated and valued. Our approach to teaching reading enables all children to make good progress from their starting point and aims to raise attainment for all children in primary school.  We firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments, preparing children for life beyond primary school.

We measure the impact of the reading curriculum using a range of formative and summative assessment procedures, including the use of PIXL tests.  Question analysis tasks are used to understand gaps in learning, identify strengths and areas for development within the reading strands and to plan future lessons according to these outcomes.

The subject is monitored regularly to measure the impact of the reading curriculum content, design and delivery, and the outcomes of this monitoring are used to drive forward next steps within the subject.