Intent

At Gothic Mede Academy, reading is at the forefront of all areas of our curriculum. We share a passion, enjoyment and enthusiasm for reading to ensure that all children are inspired and choose to read for pleasure. Our reading curriculum aims to promote a lifelong love of reading by ensuring that children’s reading fluency is developed early so that they can quickly move from learning to read to reading to learn. Children are encouraged to choose their own reading material, in addition to the reading books that they borrow from school, to develop their love of reading and excitement for books. We expect children to develop a range of strategies, not only to decode, but to understand what they are reading. We aim to provide children with opportunities to engage with and understand a wide range of texts, including use of libraries, E-Books, audio books and a variety of technologies. At Gothic Mede, children are taught reading in a variety of ways to help embed their decoding and comprehension skills so that these can then be used across the curriculum. This gives children the confidence to read and learn independently and encourages them to continue reading throughout their lives.

 

Implementation

Phonics is given high priority at Gothic Mede Academy, with children engaging in Phonics sessions, following the Essential Letters and Sounds programme, from the beginning of their time in our Reception Class. In Nursery, children are introduced to phase one environmental sounds and children who are ready in the summer term are exposed to phase 2 sounds. All children in Reception and Year 1 take part in whole class daily phonics sessions. Planning and teaching follow the Essential Letters and Sounds model (introduced in September 2021) in order to provide a consistently high level of delivery. The aim of the scheme is to minimise cognitive overload whilst giving children the opportunity to practise and overlearn sounds. Repetition and fidelity of sound production are paramount. The table below shows the progression in phonics acquisition:

Reception autumn 1	Reception aut 2	Reception spring one	Reception spring two	Reception summer one	Reception summer two
Phase 2	Phase 3	Phase 3/4	Phase 3/4	Phase 4	Phase 5 introduction

 

Year one autumn one	Year one autumn two	Year one spring one	Year one spring two	Year one summer one	Year one summer two
Phase 5	Phase 5	Phase 5	Phase 5	Review	Review

 

In Key Stage 1, a phonics specialist teacher is employed to work with identified children in small intervention groups once a week to help cover gaps in learning. Phonics intervention is given priority in school and identified children in Year 1 (and children in year 2 who have not passed the phonics screening check) receive phonics intervention every day in the Autumn term and longer, as required. In the spring term, children in Reception are identified for additional intervention. Intervention sessions do not take place at the same time as whole class phonics. Short “enable” interventions are delivered daily 1:1 by TAs/teachers to help children keep up with the phonics being taught in class.

Children in Reception are given picture books to share at home with adults in the first part of the Autumn term. These books are carefully selected to consolidate the children’s understanding of Letters and Sounds Phase 1. In the second half of the Autumn term, reading books, matched carefully to the children’s developing phonics knowledge, are sent home. In Years 1-4, children take home a school reading book every day and parents are encouraged to read with their child daily. These books are matched to the child’s phonic knowledge and level of comprehension. Books are changed weekly to encourage re-reading in order to develop fluency and deeper comprehension.

 

Reading is also prioritised through these other opportunities:

 

• Whole class daily guided reading from Reception to Year 4.
• Engagement in our bookbased curriculum, focusing on high-quality texts.
• Independent reading opportunities. (ERIC)
• 1:1 reading with adults in school.
• Comprehension activities through guided reading in KS1 and more formal, written tasks in Year 2 and KS2.
• Engagement with a variety of crosscurricular texts through topic box books and within topic lessons.
• Online learning through Nessy programme.
• World Book day is celebrated over a week including a variety of creative activities, competitions, visits from authors and class workshops.
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To promote a love of reading, children visit our recently refurbished school library every week where they have the opportunity to borrow a book and to spend time exploring a range of books in the allocated library time. Children also enjoy taking part in World Book Day every year and we aim to make this as exciting and inspiring as possible, with dress-up days, author visits and lots of book sharing opportunities across the school.

 

Impact

In reading, children are assessed using the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile and the National Curriculum. Target Tracker is used to assess children against objectives for their year group and progress is monitored by teachers and SLT. In addition, each half term children in Reception and year one are assessed individually on the sounds they have learnt in ELS and interventions are put in place immediately to plug any gaps in sound recognition, oral blending or blending for reading. This is also used for children in year 2 or key stage 2 who are not at age-related expectations for reading. The children’s progress in reading is clear evidence of the quality of reading provision across the school.

Through the many reading opportunities provided at Gothic Mede Academy, we hope that all children have the ability to read to learn by the time they leave us in Year 4. Any children who may find this difficult are identified quickly and supported throughout their time at Gothic Mede. We hope that our reading curriculum has a lasting impact that will encourage children to engage with, enjoy or even write books throughout their lives.