Reading
We value reading as a crucial life skill and instil in our children the need to strive to become fluent readers. By the time children leave us, they read confidently, and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are successful and equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.
Through Jesus, light of the world, we ignite the spark of curiosity, creativity and individuality.
Early Reading
At Killinghall, it is our intent that Early Reading has a central place within our curriculum and is recognised as a core priority. Our approach follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme with fidelity to ensure consistency, clarity, and impact.
Our early reading curriculum is ambitious and designed so that all pupils:
· Learn to read through a systematic, synthetic phonics programme.
· Build secure knowledge of GPCs (grapheme–phoneme correspondences).
· Develop accuracy and fluency through daily practice of blending and segmenting.
· Read fully decodable books that are matched precisely to their phonic knowledge.
· Develop prosody, comprehension, and enjoyment through repeated reading.
· Are supported swiftly and effectively if they fall behind.
Reading is taught explicitly, practised regularly, and celebrated widely to ensure children leave the early reading phase as confident, fluent readers.
Click on the links below to find out more about Early Reading and how you can support your child at home.
Statement of Intent
We believe that reading is the building block for all learning and so we encourage children to become avid and fluent readers. We strive to deliver a curriculum that fully prepares children for the next step of their learning journey. We are determined that every pupil will learn to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension. Rigorous assessment, a clear progression and systematic approach, alongside high-quality teaching, ensures that all pupils make good progress. As our children move up through the school, they have regular opportunities to read aloud to adults and peers. This enables us to monitor mastery of sight vocabulary, application of phonics, development of fluency and expression, knowledge of the structure of language and audience awareness. Pupils who are at risk of falling behind are identified swiftly and effectively supported, ensuring they also make good progress from their starting points. We strongly believe that EVERY child should and can be a successful reader.
Our Early Reading Lead is Mrs Salisbury and our Key Stage Two Reading Lead is Miss Holtom.
Early Reading Handbook
Read our handbook to find out more about our early reading progression and approach.
Little Wandle Phonics Programme
Click on the link below to find videos and information on the programme progression, how to say the sounds and how to support your child at home:
https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Moving into Key Stage 2
Pupils continue to benefit from some phonics work in Key Stage 2 to consolidate their understanding of grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs).
We further support pupils by providing access to Spelling Shed and the IDL programme.
Reading in Key Stage 2
In Key Stage 2, teachers read stories and extracts aloud to pupils to model how to use expression and understand the meaning of the text. We use 'My Turn, Our Turn, Your Turn' approach, where teachers model reading the text, we read together and then pupils read with a partner, to help develop fluency skills.
Reading fluency is defined as:
• reading with accuracy (reading words correctly)
• automaticity (reading words at an appropriate speed without great effort)
• prosody (appropriate expression, stress and intonation).
We focus on developing fluency because we understand that a fluent reading style can support reading comprehension. This is because pupils' limited cognitive resources are freed from focusing on word recognition and can be redirected towards comprehending the text.
To further support comprehension development, teachers encourage students to think critically about what they read by asking questions that promote analysis and reflection. For example, students might discuss the main ideas, characters, and themes in a story, helping them connect with the material. At Killinghall, we understand there are a set of comprehension strategies and elements that must be developed and combined in order to support successful comprehension. We believe these strategies should be explained, modelled, scaffolded and independently practised, as an inherent part of exploring texts.
To monitor progress, teachers assess reading skills regularly, which helps identify areas where students may need extra support. Lessons are then adapted to support and develop these areas.
It is our aim that pupils' leave Killinghall as confident readers. We firmly believe that learning to read is essential for laying the foundation for lifelong personal and academic success and we want all pupils to achieve their very best.