At All Saints, our children are taught specific reading lessons five times a week.  Every child takes part in guided reading sessions on a daily basis through Reading Rotations. Children experience a wide range of texts in line with their reading stage (determined by Accelerated Reader) and the National Curriculum expectations. Within Reading Rotations, children experience good models of reading and discussion around the variety of texts they are exposed to (fiction and non-fiction). Our children follow a strategic journey of reading to develop their understanding of a text while and higher-order comprehension skills needed to respond to a text. The Five Elements are core to the teaching and learning of reading at All Saints.

Implementation of reading in Key Stage 2

Reading Rotations across key Stage 2

The goal of Reading Rotations across KS2 is for children to become strategic readers through a journey of differentiated teaching that supports students in developing reading proficiency. Children follow a journey of:

1. Guided session of the text with teacher - Predict and read aloud. Teacher modelling fluent reading of a text matched to students’ reading stage
2. Re-reading and chorus reading to develop fluency
3. Reading with a goal / purpose (Reciprocal Reading and Reading Detectives- Questioning, summarising, meaning of words)
4. Prosody stage - children use drama and role-play to develop oracy, fluency, confidence and an understanding of narrative voice (Readers Theatre, Hot seating, interviewing characters, freeze frames come alive)
5. Comprehension skills - (Specific A.F questions designed to develop the comprehension needs of specific group, Bronze, silver, gold question stems, rapid retrieval, comprehension tennis)
6. Written responses to a task - Writing task at the end of the journey. Year 5 and 6 should continue to apply what they have learnt to more complex writing. (Balanced arguments, speech, persuasive letter).

Word Reading in KS2

From year 3 onwards, the National Curriculum states that teaching comprehension should be taking precedence over teaching word reading directly. Any focus on word reading should support the development of vocabulary.

Similar to Year 2, any Key Stage 2 child who are still not secure in their phonics knowledge will continue with a phonics intervention using Rapid Catch up. They will have 3 x weekly phonics sessions for 20 minutes a session. They will have 3 x 20 minute reading sessions using the Little Wandle Big Cats phonics books. During these interventions, they will be assessed and reviewed every 4 weeks until secure to phase 5.

Using Accelerated Reader

Children are listened to read by an adult on a 1:1 basis every week. From 1:1 and guided sessions, teachers record evidence to inform APP judgments/ National Curriculum expectations. Children are given a bookmark with 20 questions (before reading, while reading, after reading targeted questions) to answer daily in their Reading Records. Children are expected to read aloud at home to an adult and record evidence of this in their record, which will be signed by parent and teacher on a weekly basis. Children access high level texts, read to them by their teacher in order to model how unfamiliar language and sentence structures should sound and in turn, aid comprehension of the text.

Vocabulary in KS2

At All Saints, we explicitly teach unfamiliar words before children encounter them in the text. Vocabulary is a whole school focus and we believe it is the gateway to understanding. All children use a vocabulary book to record new and important vocabulary, they are then encouraged to use this in their writing tasks. Bedrock Learning is used to develop the vocabulary children are exposed to. 

Year 3 and 4

Children will be taught to apply their growing knowledge of root words, prefixes and suffixes both to read aloud and to understand the meaning of new words they meet. Read further exception words, noting the unusual correspondences between spelling and sound, and where these occur in the word.

Year 5 and 6

Teachers read aloud whole books to expose children to books and authors that they might not choose to read themselves, as directed by National Curriculum. Reading aloud enables students to develop their oracy skills to question and contribute to the discussion of a text, in which teachers should provide guidance and feedback on such explanations.

Comprehension in KS2

In Key stage 2, the National Curriculum states that teaching comprehension should be taking precedence over teaching word reading directly. Any focus on word reading should support the development of vocabulary.

Years 3 and 4

In year 3 and 4, focus should be on supporting the understanding of what children read, in books and independently through careful planning of reading comprehension aimed at targeting the gaps in knowledge and skills of readers in each class.

Years 5 and 6

In Year 5 and 6 the complexity of the texts will increase and will increase the level of challenge during this stage. Children should be reading for a wide range of purposes, being exposed to fiction, plays, poetry, non-fiction and reference books or textbooks at a higher level (NC). A crucial element of year 5 and 6 is teaching children the skills to be able provide reasoned justifications for their views, explain and discussing their understanding of what they have read through formal presentations and debates. Children will be taught specific exam techniques to learn the ‘language of tests’. (P.E.E answers, how to number events in a text, impression and evidence etc).

Whole Class Reading Comprehension

During whole class reading, children will read a class text linked to the topic they are learning about. Effective questioning about the text in hand is a vital part in our reading lessons. A differentiated approach of ‘Bronze, Silver and Gold questioning’ is carried out across KS2. Selecting a specific target criteria, teachers will create comprehension sheets for the class text follow the continuum approach to teaching and learning carried out at All Saints. Frome bronze, silver to gold the level of the difficulty of questions will get progressively harder. It is important for teaches to consider what types of questions will support reading or elicit the types of inferences we want our pupils to make about what has been read.

We aim for our students to be constantly reflective aiming to improve their responses to questions through in depth discussions to provide opportunities for editing and to add to their answers. Teachers also provide model answers to questions, verbally or in writing.