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Reading Strategy at Avanti Park School

VisionÌý

We believe being a reading centric school supports social justice, opens contexts beyond children’s own experienceÌýand backgroundsÌýand enables access to the wider curriculumÌýand the world around them. We understand the critical importance of fostering a love of reading, supported by encouraging and positive staff who help our children build their resilience and focus.Ìý

• We aim to enable our pupils to read confidently, fluently, accurately and with understanding.
• We aim to employ a full range of reading cues – phonic, graphic, syntactic,ÌýcontextualÌý– to monitor, correct and make sense of their own reading.
• We aim to foster an interest in words and their meanings and to gain an appreciation of books from a variety of genres.
• We aim to enable the children to find books interesting, to read with enjoyment and to evaluate and justify their preferences.

• We aim to develop a suitable technical vocabulary through which to understand and discuss their reading.
• We aim to develop reading skills in tandem with those of writing, so that they may function in society, as literate adults and readers for life.
• We aim to create reading opportunities across all areas of the curriculum, to make it more meaningful and relevant to the children.

• We teach and learn using a systematic, synthetic phonics approach (Read WriteÌýInc). Our goal is for all children to be reading fluently at an age-appropriate level by the end of Year 2. Many children will achieve this earlier, where their breadth of content is widened. Groups are fluidly set so that teaching is closely matched with children’s phonetic knowledge. This is informed through constant formative assessment alongside half-termly summative assessments.

• Through assessment, staff identify and support children who are at risk of gaps in learning emerging through quality first teaching and, where appropriate, 1:1 sessionsÌýare planned and delivered.Ìý

• Children who are struggling in lower achieving sets are given ongoing 1:1 sessions, matched precisely to their phonetic knowledge.

• Once children’s phonetic knowledge begins to be mastered, they transition to focusing on enhancing their fluency. This enables them to access, achieve and enjoy theÌýwhole-class readingÌýapproach throughout Key Stage 2.

Hearing aÌýhigh qualityÌýbook read aloud is the right of every child in our school. By reading aloud, our children hear the enthusiasm and prosody of an experienced reader, their teacher. They are awakened to a vast array of vocabulary, characters, contexts and plots beyond their own reading. We highly encourage our parents to continue reading aloud to their children whatever their age. To facilitate this, we haveÌýinvested in our library heavily as well increasing the book stock – ensuring that our pupils develop a love for readingÌýat an early age.Ìý

DevelopingÌýCultural LiteracyÌý

We have designed our reading curriculum to include a spine of significant authors that represent communities and backgrounds from all around the world.ÌýOur belief isÌýthis assistsÌýin developing a love of reading and enables children to open their eyes to authors beyond the most familiar.ÌýThe texts selected vary in genre to ensure that children read and hear a variety of text types furthermore, we have ensured there is a developing complexity to the novels both in terms ofÌýlexileÌýdifficulty (age-appropriate fluency) and depth of characters and issues (comprehension).

Breadth of ContextsÌý

In order to support social justice as well as help children develop a love of reading, we have carefully selected a range of contexts that children will encounter throughout our reading curriculum, whether that be throughÌýclass reads orÌýwhole-classÌýreading sessions. We believe that by broadening the contexts that our children are exposed to, they will develop aspirations beyond their immediate setting, equip them with understanding and appreciation for the issues in the world around them and enable them to be change makers in the world around them.Ìý

AssessmentÌý

During early reading, children are assessed within the Read WriteÌýIncÌýframework. As they transition to building their fluency, our bespoke running records are used to guide teachers on who may need additional support at achieving or maintaining age-appropriate fluency. FromÌýReceptionÌýto Year 6 we use standardised reading tests. Alongside daily formative assessment, these enable teachersÌýto pinpoint comprehension needs and support required.