Reading Curriculum
Context
Our main aim is that Osborne pupils love to read.
Osborne Primary is situated in the local authority of Birmingham; an area which has been identified as having high levels of social deprivation. We have a number of disadvantaged children, and increasing numbers of children with English as an additional language. A significant proportion of our pupils enter school with a limited vocabulary and limited spoken word.
With this in mind, at Osborne Primary, we want to ensure our Reading Curriculum enables all children to learn to read. Our Reading Curriculum has been designed to ensure our pupils learn sound strategies for word reading and to provide them with the opportunities to immerse themselves in all the wonderful benefits reading has to offer.
Intent
At Osborne Primary, we want all of our pupils to be confident readers who love to read. We want to ensure this is a lifelong love of reading. We expose our children to a variety of language rich literature across all curriculum areas.
In order to develop our pupils’ cultural capital, our books open up new worlds that our pupils may be unable to experience anywhere else. We strive to build imagination, inspire and empower our pupils through reading. In order to do this, pupils are immersed into books which reflect them, their families, their communities and the wider world.
Aims
The overarching aim for English in the National Curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The National Curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:
· read easily, fluently and with good understanding.
· develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
· acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
· appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
· use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.
· are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.
Implementation
If children are to develop as competent, fluent and confident readers it is essential that they have a secure understanding of grapheme-phoneme correspondence to blend phonemes into spoken words and segment spoken words into phonemes. Such skills are essential to developing competent and assertive readers.
At Osborne Primary, we follow the systematic approach of ‘Read Write Inc’ and this begins when our pupils start in Reception. Pupils who do not meet the expected standard in phonics, continue with phonic intervention to ensure all pupils can learn to read. This consistent and rigorous approach provides our children with the foundations to become enthused readers with a passion for storytelling, literature and vocabulary.
We strive to embed a culture of ‘everyone’s a reader’.
This is done through explicit vocabulary instruction and the teaching of VIPERS comprehension skills from years 2 to 6 . Our Shared Reading lessons in Key Stage Two support our pupils to engage with and develop a deep understanding of a wide range of texts .
At Osborne Primary, we develop reading fluency through a range of strategies such as echo reading and by providing opportunities for children to read both independently and aloud. On a daily basis children have time to read for pleasure (either online or paper) and each year group has a class novel that is shared with the children during the school day. Reading and quality literature is interwoven into our whole curriculum through the use of key texts to enhance the variety of exciting topics that we teach.
We understand that a love of reading comes not only from school, but by providing opportunities for pupils to read at home. At Osborne, we have a wonderful well-stocked library and we use Oxford Reading Buddy, Reading Plus and home readers to ensure our pupils can extend their love of reading outside of the classroom. Parent workshops, family story times and reading awards also contribute to this.
