Reading is a vital life skill that every child has the right to develop. At Hethersett Woodside, we place great importance on enabling our children to become fluent readers whilst also promoting reading for enjoyment. We aim for children to engage with a wide range of styles, genres and themes across their time at Hethersett Woodside.
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, children are introduced to letters and their respective sounds through use of the Read, Write Inc. approach to phonics. Across Key Stage 1, all children are grouped for daily Read, Write Inc phonics lessons, according to their reading fluency so that sessions meet the needs of each learner to ensure progress is made. The books children read at school, and at home, are matched to their increasing knowledge of the phonetic structure of the English language as well as their understanding of ‘tricky’ red words. Once children have completed the Read, Write Inc scheme, they move onto whole class guided reading sessions.
In Key Stage 2, reading skills and strategies are taught explicitly; we are launching the use of ‘Destination Reader’ as our approach to facilitating this. All classes have 4 timetabled sessions a week where they focus on different skills, including: prediction, inference, asking questions, making connections, clarifying, evaluating and summarising. All sessions also focus on specific learning behaviours that support the learning of such skills and various strategies, such as actively listening to others and discussing our thoughts. The texts are chosen for these whole class guided reading sessions to support wider areas of the curriculum, to promote our reading marathon or to suit the particular interests and needs of different cohorts.
All classes have an opportunity to browse, read and select a range of books during their weekly library sessions. Children have opportunities to read their own choices of books within school and are encouraged to take their books home to continue reading for pleasure. We also provide opportunities for classes to visit the local library in Hethersett.
To promote reading for pleasure and to allow for children to engage with books in a wide range of styles, genres, themes and voices, Hethersett Woodside launched the ‘Reading Marathon’!!
Each year, children are set the challenge of reading 26 books to complete their personal reading marathon! To help cover each ‘mile’ an age-appropriate book list has been compiled for each year group to refer to, with a copy of each of these books being made available in each class.
Children should aim for 4 non-fiction texts and 10 fiction texts from the list, alongside 6 independent text choices. Children are encouraged to read books independently, but also with adults at school and at home, especially for texts which may be more challenging for them to access. To further support all children in accessing and achieving their marathon, the 6 core texts used to support our writing curriculum each year in class will count towards their mileage!
For each book completed, they will produce a piece of work that celebrates or represents that particular book and will be a record of each ‘mile’ on their journey. For example, they might choose to create a wanted poster, or a character fact file, or maybe even a presentation!
After 26 miles, they will be awarded a certificate in our celebration assembly, as well as receiving a token to select their book prize from our Reading Marathon vending machine to honour their fantastic achievement!
