Reading

Reading is a central thread of teaching throughout the curriculum at Rose Green Junior School as reading plays a crucial role in enabling children to access all areas of their learning.

Not only that, reading matters in countless aspects of every day life and there is a direct correlation between children's and adult's reading skills and the opportunities available to them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our aim at Rose Green Junior School is to generate life-long readers by teaching the required skills in order to read proficiently, whilst instilling a love of reading which also has significant benefits to mental well-being. 

Reading with your Child at Home

There's some great tips about reading at home on the Book Trust website:Book Trust Website  

 

It is common for children to find a genre or author who they really enjoy or who they feel comfortable with reading. Sometimes this can mean that they are reluctant to broaden their reading choices which is essential to further develop their reading skills, their knowledge of different cultures, their general knowledge, vocabulary and models to draw upon for their own writing.

If this sounds like your child/children, then click on the link below to view an excellent resource from Books for Topics with suggestions to 'branch out' your children's choices.

 

 

Fluency

Reading fluency has a direct correlation with reading comprehension. It is sometimes described as the bridge between word recognition and comprehension.

Fluent readers are readers who can read accurately, at an appropriate speed without great effort (automaticity) and with the appropriate volume, stress and intonation (prosody).

A fluent reading style can support comprehension because pupils' working memories are freed from focusing on word recognition and can be redirected towards comprehending the text.

 

Fluency at Rose Green Junior School fits into three strands:

 

Modelled Skills	Explicitly Taught Skills	Supported Practise
All children will be modelled reading fluently by their teachers daily whilst listening to their Class Reader and weekly by their teachers or peers during Poetry Reads.   During the first session of a new text in Book Talk time, the teacher or proficient peers will model fluent reading.   When any text is read aloud in class during any lessons other than English, the teacher will model good fluency.	Scanning ahead in the text to see the punctuation coming up e.g. if there is a question mark they need to read using a questioning voice by raising their tone at the end of a sentence.   Learning the difference between the length of pauses when reading commas, full stops, ellipses and dashes.   How to interpret characterisation when reading aloud to read with the right expression.	Reading in pairs or whole class choral reading.   Repeating sections of text modelled by the teacher as a group or class.   Re-reading the same text several times. Each reading becomes easier and motivation increases as students experience enhanced fluency thanks to repeated exposure to words and phrases

 

At Rose Green Junior School, some children will receive specific support with fluency skills after they have completed a phonics intervention programme.

Reading for Pleasure

 

 

 

 

 

Our aim at Rose Green Junior School is to instill a life-long love of reading.

Our classrooms at Rose Green Junior School have lots of fantastic books on offer, including teachers' recommended reads. Teachers love to recommend books to children in order to broaden their reading choices.

Each year we invite authors in to our school who visit every year group and each child is given a copy of their book and get to meet the author whilst having their book signed.

On Thursdays after school our Year 6 librarians run an after-school session whereby children can visit the library with their parents and sign out books to read at home. Our fabulous librarians all apply for the role and are avid readers themselves, with the ability to talk to the children about book choices and make recommendations. 

Children are read to everyday by their teacher from their Class Reader text. This is a time loved by all, where children (and their teachers!) get lost in a book. Once a week, this time is used to share a poem or two and children are also invited to share or perform a poem to the class. 

 

Cultural Literacy

Cultural literacy means being able to understand the traditions, regular activities and history of a group of people from a given culture. It also means being able to engage with these traditions, activities and history in cultural spaces like places of worship, museums, galleries and performances. Cultural literacy contributes positively to the society in which you live. It reduces prejudice and inequality based on culture and increases the value placed on diversity which is a core British Value.

 

As one way of developing cultural literacy, Rose Green Junior School ensures that the texts we use in different year groups are set in a range of different communities within the UK and in the wider world. 

cultural literacy overview 4.pdf

 Reading Spine 

 

Due to the growing complexity of reading across the curriculum, we have developed a Reading Spine that will expose children to a variety of texts that will support them in order to successfully navigate reading with confidence.

Using Doug Lemov's research from 'Reading Reconsidered', we have factored the five types of text into our English curriculum. These are complex beyond a lexical level and demand more from the reader than other types of books. 

Our whole school reading spine can be found below, which also explains each of the 5 text types.

rgjs 5 plagues of reading spine docx.pdf

 

Phonics

Phonics is a fundamental aspect of improving children's reading.  As such, this is prioritised upon entry in Year 3, where all children are assessed for their phonic knowledge.  Structured phonic teaching is provided to children who require it, following a government-approved synthetic phonic programme 'Read, Write Inc.'  This programme provides children with the knowledge they need to be able to decode words correctly, as well as building fluency when reading.

Children are taught phonics in small ability groups and are their progress is regularly assessed, so the content can be adjusted according to the child's needs.

As children continue on their reading journey in school, we ensure that their fluency continues to develop through in-class Book Talk sessions, where fluency remains a key aspect of sessions, alongside comprehension. 

Author Visits

 

 

On Tuesday 4^th October we were extremely lucky to have the best selling children's author Ross Welford visit our Year 5's and 6's. Ross did an amazing presentation about his work and his journey to becoming an author with both year groups, full of magic (quite literally) and entertaining anecdotes.

The children learnt all the ingredients which go into making a successful, entertaining and imaginative story and talked about some of his own favourite children's authors, which included JK Rowling and Enid Blyton.

The children were able to ask him questions and we were really proud of the level of questions they posed, including how many times he was rejected before a publisher took on his first book (about 4 times) and how long it took him to write a book (about a year). 

It was great to hear that the way the children are taught to write at Rose Green Juniors follows the same process as Ross uses, including jotting ideas to get him started and redrafting quite a few times, along with lots of proof-reading and editing!

Each child was given a copy of his latest book Into the Sideways World, a book mark and got to have their books signed by him. It has been a joy to see so many of the books being read across upper school and the excitement from the children to tell us all what's happened in the parts they are reading.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Ross and to Chichester Book Fest for helping to organise the event as well as heavily subsidising the costs.