Indian Queens Primary School & Nursery

English - Reading

"Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic."

- J. K. Rowling

“Sometimes the children tell us about their books at home and they love talk about the pictures and answering questions.” - Year 6 pupil

“I love reading with my reading buddy!” - Year 1 pupil

Reading impact statement

At Indian Queens, we firmly believe that reading is an essential skill that is vital for the life opportunities of our children. Our aim is to give reading the prominence it deserves through developing the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information. At the heart of our curriculum is our drive to foster a love of reading. We are passionately committed to ensuring that our children become avid lifelong readers. We aim to equip them with the skills needed to access a whole world of books, and therefore a lifetime of enjoyment as they continue to read for pleasure well beyond their time at Indian Queens.

In preparation for the next stages in their learning journey, we strive to ensure that all children can read confidently, fluently, accurately and with good understanding. Through following a clear pathway of progression as they advance through our curriculum, all children will have the tools needed to successfully read for a range of purposes in all aspects of their future life experiences.

As a school, we emphasise the importance of mastering the early reading skills as the vital foundations for developing strong word recognition. We prioritise high-quality book talk with all children. Through exposing the children to a wide range of genres and authors, we expect them to effectively communicate preferences and opinions about the range of texts they read. Equally, we aim to encourage children to explore the vocabulary used and ignite their curiosity as they ask questions to deepen their understanding of what they have read. We aspire to nurture curiosity through encouraging our children to enjoy learning about the world in which we live through the knowledge they gain from reading relevant texts.

Literacy Shed Resources

Pobble 365 - Daily Writing Resources

Books For Topics

How we teach reading in KS2

By Key Stage Two, most of our children have acquired the fluency to access a wider variety of reading material. We continue to teach reading comprehension through regular reading lessons. Teachers explicitly teach higher order reading comprehension skills and our children closely analyse texts for meaning. Children have the opportunity to practise answering questions verbally before answering them in a written format in their books.

Children in Key Stage Two that are not yet reading fluently receive interventions using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Rapid Catch Up programme. This involves a mixture of interventions delivered by a trained teaching assistant and 3 times weekly reading sessions following the decoding, prosody, comprehension approach. These children will have regular 3 weekly assessments following the Rapid Catch Up programme and are placed on book levels and interventions that will help them close the gap and build up the fluency skills required.

Every Key Stage Two class (and Year 2 from Spring term) teaches a daily whole class guided reading session using the VIPERS approach. This currently is taught by either following a high-quality text, extracts or short film clips from the Literacy Shed VIPERS. Children are given opportunities to participate in book talk, discuss their thoughts with peers and encouraged to give written answers to a variety of questions linked to the different reading domains.

All classes from Reception - Year 6 have a reading for pleasure 'class text' that is read for 20 minutes daily to the class. These texts have been selected so that children are exposed to a variety texts from different cultures and backgrounds. We also explore a range of authors and text types.

In addition to our explicitly taught reading lessons in Key Stage Two, we also provide our children with:

Many opportunities to read for pleasure, including daily times when teachers read children the latest class story
Rapid catch up for children for any child who is not a fluent reader or cannot comprehend at at least an age appropriate level
Regular, open ended discussions about stories and books
Opportunities to read and discuss a wide read of genres including fiction, picture, easy-reads, poetry and non-fiction (including news reports to ensure children are aware of local, national and global issues) to foster a love for reading
Books to take home, carefully chosen to match children’s interests and their level of fluency

We also have a number of reading enrichment activities, including:

Cornwall Library Service subscription, to keep our library updated with new texts and provide Topic boxes for our classrooms
Regular visits to our school library, a great space with a wide variety of regularly updated books
Participation in local reading competitions including the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge
Book Fairs - children are timetabled in for browsing sessions
Celebrations for World Book Week
Reading buddies - teaming up older and younger classes to share favourite books together
Monthly 'Reading Rocks' subscription, where we receive new, high quality books for our class reading areas monthly