Our priority for reading is two-fold, ‘The Will and The Skill’: the teaching of reading skills and the enjoyment of literature, enabling children to become lifelong, confident readers.
As children begin to read, we focus on decoding, primarily through phonics in addition to other strategies e.g. whole word recognition, using picture cues and context. As children build fluency, comprehension skills become our main area of focus and questioning focuses on skills such as re-telling, inference and prediction. We believe that high-quality literature is key to motivating children to read, so we aim to instil a love of books and other texts. Reading to our children every day helps to foster this.
In KS1 pupils are likely to be emergent and developing readers and pupils will focus on decoding using phonic strategies as required by the 2014 National Curriculum, but also on reading for meaning. Grouping pupils according to their stage of reading development is essential here so that pupils can access the chosen text, apply phonic knowledge and pay attention to sentence structures without loss of meaning. We also support children to respond to the text and to develop positive attitudes to reading.
In KS2 pupils are becoming more fluent and independent readers. Decoding has become a more automatic process and, in addition, they use knowledge of spelling patterns and grammatical knowledge to read unfamiliar words with accuracy. Over time, they will read different texts for different purposes and need to experience and develop higher order reading skills in order to engage fully and respond effectively. Inferential thinking, stating preferences and opinions and justifying them, understanding different viewpoints and considering the writer’s craft are among the required skills.
