Reading
At Tarvin Primary School, we aim to inspire a love of storytelling among our budding readers. We give our readers a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Through our engaging scheme of Read Write Inc. our readers become accurate, fluent and expressive which catapults them into exploring the rich and varied pathways texts. This is crucial for enabling them to acquire knowledge and build on what they already know. Parents are a key part of supporting their child’s reading journey throughout their time at school.
Read Write Inc. and Early Reading
At Tarvin Primary School, we follow the Read Write Inc. reading and comprehension programme. Read Write Inc., developed my Ruth Miskin, provides a structured and systematic approach to teaching reading. It is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers.
There are clear expectations of attainment for each year group by the end of each half-term through the year. We aim for children to reach the end of the programme, as fluent readers, by the end of Key Stage 1. Starting in reception, children are assessed by a team of teachers to establish the correct reading band and group. Assessments then take place at least every six weeks, or more frequently for accelerated learners or those children requiring additional support.
For pupils still needing support with phonics from years 3-6, we provide an individual reading programme, Freshstart and Read Write Inc., that has phonically decodable texts at the heart of it.
Each week children will be provided with 3 books to share at home. The children will bring home their Read Write Inc core book, and they should be able to read the book confidently to you: accurately, fluently and with expression. They will also bring home a ‘Bookbag Book’, which is an unfamiliar book, but very similar to the Read Write Inc book they have been reading in class. This gives the children an opportunity to practice what they have learnt in a different context. Children will also bring a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ book home. These books are not for the children to read independently, as they could be beyond their reading capabilities at present. These are for you to read together and to enjoy.
At Tarvin Primary we use Pathways to Read from Year 3 to Year 6 for shared reading sessions, both whole class and smaller groups. This ensures reading objectives are progressive across the school, and the children develop comprehension skills through engaging and language rich texts, with an emphasis on inference skills. Pathways to Read links closely to the Pathways to Write units of work, therefore supporting the children with their written work. Pathways to Read provides opportunities to model and develop skills for reading aloud, including reading with intonation, expression and awareness of an audience, as appropriate. The children have opportunities for whole class, group and paired discussion, responding to a range of questions about the texts.
We deliver one whole class shared reading lesson per week from years 3-6 with bespoke grouped reading for every pupil at least once a week as well as individual reading. In our shared and grouped reads, there is a clear teaching focus with the opportunity to master key reading skills in each session. There are follow on reading tasks to enable pupils to evidence the skills they have mastered independently.
You will find the end of year expectations for reading for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.
Pathways to Read follows a mastery approach to learning with three categories of skills developed each half term:
- Ongoing skills - linked to text choices and achieved through selection of teaching activities
- Core skills - prediction, vocabulary development and retrieval
- Mastery skills - 2-3 objectives are focused on for pupils to master over the course of the half-term
Each Pathways to Read unit consists of six whole class reading sessions following the four-part structure:
- Predict
- Clarify vocabulary
- Read and retrieve
- Read and explain
The core elements of each session are prediction, developing pupils' vocabulary and retrieval. The 'Read and explain' part of the lesson is the mastery focus for the majority of sessions.
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