Reading
At Airedale Junior School, all children have an entitlement to high quality reading opportunities. Teachers acknowledge and celebrate the essential part that reading plays in our curriculum and seek many ways to promote healthy attitudes to reading. We actively seek avenues to expand children’s knowledge of authors and vocabulary and above all equip them to use their reading skills in order to access all areas of our curriculum offer.
We model and promote the development of positive attitudes towards reading. It is our intent to create a love of reading which will inspire pupils to read for enjoyment as well as for the acquisition of knowledge.
Children have access to a range of high quality literature in stimulating classroom environments, within our libraries in school and the local library service. We use a variety of methods to ensure that children learn to be skilled readers; shared reading, class reading and one to one reading are all utilised in partnership with parents, alongside a whole school teaching style which supports accuracy, fluency, intonation and understanding.
We see home-school links as a vital part of the reading process. We positively encourage parental involvement in the development of a child’s reading. We hold parental workshops to provide parents with information on how we teach children to read and offer reading afternoons and mornings, where parents and grandparents can share reading activities in school with their children. We actively encourage ‘reading friends’ to help children on their journey to reading fluency. These are volunteers from across the community who work alongside us to positively encourage reading and support our children.
At Airedale Junior School we use a variety of literature across the curriculum to enhance the exciting topics that we teach. It is our intent to ensure that all children are able to develop and use a range of transferable skills between areas of the curriculum and reading is one of these core skills.
From Year Three to Year Six we teach daily reading lessons. Children are exposed to a range of literature from a wide variety of genres. These lessons focus on the acquisition of new vocabulary to enhance understanding. They teach the children how to use a text to answer evidence based questions and allow them opportunity to ask questions and challenge their own thinking.
Where children enter our school and are not yet fluent readers, they access daily Read Write Inc lessons to ensure that their reading skills are supported and they make rapid progress in word recognition, phonic skills and fluency.
What is "Read Write Inc?"
At Airedale Junior School, we use the ‘Read Write Inc’ programme to introduce children to phonics (letters and their sounds) and to teach them the skills to accuratley read words and texts fluently in order to comprehend what they are reading.
Using the link below, you will find a series of information and tutorial videos explaining the basics of Read Write Inc. Phonics. These videos will help you to understand how we teach reading in school and to support your child at home. Click links below to see the videos.
https://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/
How do we foster a love of reading?
Encouraging and fostering a love of reading for all our children is important. Across the school we plan and enjoy regular story time where children are able to listen to their teachers read; be transported into other realms and enjoy the adventures that can be found in stories. Children and staff choose these adventures together from a wide range of authors; popular and medal winning authors, to offer a varied reading experience and thus support their use of language across the curriculum.
Each year group has daily opportunities to explore, read and listen to the 50 reccomended reads for their year group. We also encourage parents and carers to access these texts at the local Airedale Library to develop their reading miles.
It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.
How can parents support at home?
Each week, pupils have the opportunity to change their reading books when they are able to confidently and fluently read their book. We encourage all pupils to read at home a minimum of three times per week. Pupils are rewarded with raffle tickets and prizes for reading at home.
Y3 & Y4 Parent Guide- Supporting Reading at Home
Y5 & Y6 Parent Guide- Supporting Reading at Home
To help support your child's progression in reading, you can visit the Oxford Owl website and access lots of free resources. Use the following link to open the Oxford Owl page for parents.
