Reading at Brownmead

A vital skill that supports children’s learning across the whole curriculum.

Reading is a skill essential for life and at Brownmead Academy we want every child to leave school as a competent reader with a love of books. Reading is a habit, and that habit needs to be grounded in what we do at school, therefore reading underpins our entire curriculum. As a school, we will ensure that our children are taught to read with fluency, accuracy and understanding through a variety of discreet and cross-curricular learning opportunities. Above all, we want children in our school to become enthusiastic, independent, and reflective readers. We want our children to fall in love with reading so that it brings them pleasure and allows them to experience new things, discover new worlds and explore the emotions of others. 

Intent

At Brownmead Primary Academy, reading is a top priority and is a key driver within our curriculum.  It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils can read fluently and with confidence in any subject. We intend all children to leave Brownmead Primary Academy  with a rich vocabulary that provides them with the ability to play and manipulate language, recognising the nuance of meaning and how language can be used for a range of purposes. We want children to have the confidence to be able to communicate effectively in a variety of situations’ both now and in the future. 

We therefore intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop:  - knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; 

• to establish an appreciation and love of reading; 
•  to gain knowledge across the curriculum; 
• and develop their comprehension skills. 

We are committed to providing quality, vocabulary-rich reading material, which immerses and enhances all pupils wider knowledge of the spoken and written word, through modern and classic children’s literature and non-fiction texts. 

Implementation:

Reading after phonics 

Once children are confidently reading, typically during mid-Year 2, they move on to accessing the RWI comprehension programme, which ensures all texts independently read are accurately matched to pupil ability to ensure progression and challenge for all children before moving onto the Resilient Reader programme in Year 3.  

Books are carefully selected by teachers with the knowledge of how they link to other areas of the curriculum. o All children from Year 2-Year 6 take part in four whole class reading lessons per week, to teach pupils a variety of comprehension skills through Resilient .

All teachers use these to introduce pupils to a range of genres and to teach a range of techniques which enable children to comprehend the meaning of what they read. More complex questions are evaluated between wider groups and teachers model how to refine answers to a high standard.

All classrooms have their own class reading areas with topic themed books, with quality stock will be contantly updated to further enhance and broaden pupils’ reading experience. 

Impact:

The Reading curriculum is evaluated through:

• Analysis of phonics lessons
• Analysis of phonics assessments
• Analysis of whole-class reading lessons
• Analysis of comprehension question

As we believe that reading is key to all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments.  As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature across a range of genres cultures and styles is enhanced. 

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and reading enquiry, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers who can apply their knowledge and experience to a range of texts through the Key Stage 2 curriculum. 
As a Year 6 reader, transitioning into secondary school, we aspire that children are fluent, confident and able readers, who can access a range of texts for pleasure and enjoyment, as well as use their reading skills to unlock learning and all areas of the curriculum. We aim for pupils to relate their reading experiences to their own personal development, developing an empathy for characters and making links to their own behaviours. 

In addition to this: 

• Parents and carers will have a good understanding of how they can support reading at home.
• The % of pupils working at age related expectations and above age related expectations within each year group will be at least in line with national averages and will match the ambitious targets of individual children.
• The gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils will be minimal (e.g. disadvantaged vs nondisadvantaged). 

Whole class guided reading:

Reading Comprehension is taught as a whole class reading lesson four times a week for 45 minutes. There is one learning objective for the whole class based around a text.  The activities are adapted for different abilities so that all children can access the learning objective and be challenged.  The focus of the reading lessons will be a book linked to their topic where possible. Other texts from a variety of genres will be used as a comparison with the main text. Visual literacy will also be used to develop reading skills taught.

At Brownmead we use Resilient Reader which is a vehicle to aid the learning and teaching of reading skills making them easily accessible yet more focused and specific.

Children will be taught to Skim by verbally listing the Gist…

… And scan using the domains of compare, predict, retrieve, infer and explain by referring to the text. 

Reading_Progression_Document_24_25.pdf

Reading Coverage 2024/2025

Reading for pleasure:

Reading for pleasure has many non-literacy benefits and can increase empathy, improve relationships with others, reduce the symptoms of depression and improve well being throughout life (The Reading Agency 2015). As a school we believe reading for pleasure is an important part of the curriculum, which is timetabled daily for all year groups. All pupils take part in reading a book of their choice every day for 10-15 minutes. Children pick these books from either classroom book corners or the school library,

Class novel:

Every class across the school is read to by an adult on a regular basis, fostering a love for reading through exposing the children to high quality literature. Teachers are encouraged to choose challenging texts that will uncover new vocabulary and themes, opening discussions around the language of books. Our diverse class readers are read by teachers daily to children which are linked to curriculum topics.

Home Readers:

EYFS, KS1 and KS2: Children are heard reading independently by an adult or their peers on a regular basis, changing their books when required. Children work their way through the stages according to their ability, progressing to reading literature of their choice (checked for suitability by an adult where necessary). Parents are asked to sign the home school record book to confirm books are being read at home.

All children (EYFS- Year 6) have access to Oxford Reading Buddy, children can access online books at home and answer comprehension questions based on the book.

Recommended reads EYFS-Year 6

Poetry

It is a statutory requirement in the National Curriculum that children learn to recite poems from heart. This collection of poems has been compiled to assist teachers in finding suitable poems for this purpose.

Some are classic poems, others are more contemporary – all of them are suitable for children to perform and read aloud. Learning to retell a poem from memory is challenging and with this in mind the selected poems have been chosen for their use or rhythm, rhyme and imagery. The collection of poems have been organised into year groups and each year group has been given a poet and a style of poetry.  This ensures there is progression in content, style and length or poems but also flexibility for teachers to choose when they use the poems selected. 

poetry_spine.pdf