Teaching of Reading at Southfield Tuesday 28th February

Aims of today To find out about the school priorities linked to reading To find out how we teach reading at Southfield To find out about our next steps in improving reading To hear from children about their experiences of reading at Southfield

School Priorities At Southfield we believe: Learning to read is one of the most important skills children learn. This is because reading is an essential skill for life. Reading opens doors to all the other learning we do – in school, in further education and in our adult lives.

School Priorities Increase attainment and progress in reading across Years 1 to 6 by improving the teaching of key reading skills in Guided Reading sessions. In Early Years the priority is: Extend high attainers in EYFS by providing more opportunities for developing reading, writing and number in and outside the classroom.

What do we do at Southfield? Teach phonics daily in EYFS and KS1- children are grouped Guided reading is taught from Year 1 to Year 6 four times a week. Children work in groups on a set text. During Guided reading the class teacher will work with a group on a focused objective. Years 1 to 6 study a quality text each term (these are included in the curriculum maps sent home)- this enables children to read a whole text and do a variety of work around it. Teachers plan so there are more opportunities for children to use their reading skills across the curriculum e.g. International Primary Curriculum. Moderation of reading- teachers sit with one another and moderate assessments regularly, this is also done in Pupil Progress Meetings (half termly).

Reading- Next steps All staff have had one day training on how to teach reading comprehension with Mark Hartley (Head teacher from a school in Richmond). At the training strategies to teach inference and deduction were shared. We looked at how to teach this in whole class reading sessions and guided reading sessions. Next term we will have a workshop for parent/carers and share strategies for teaching reading. We have phonics sessions for EYFS and KS1 parent/carers EYFS have visited other schools to see how they promote reading and made changes at Southfield. We are making changes to our Guided Reading system so children apply reading skills learnt.

Reading- Next steps Carrying out an audit of Guided Reading books and class texts- to ensure we have appropriate texts Provide more opportunities for children to apply their reading skills across the curriculum We have organised for more reading volunteers to come in and hear children read Introduced new termly reading assessments in Years 1 to 5 to help assess reading and identify gaps in learning- we trying these out at the moment

Book Week

Ready Steady READ Children have been asked to take part in this sponsored read It promotes reading and enables children and school to get FREE books Children are sponsored to read as much as they can If children raise over £20 they get half of that money back to buy books from Usborne The school also gets free books depending on how much money we raise Please can you support us with this

Visit to classrooms You will now have the opportunity to visit classrooms to see children taking part in an English lesson. You will see children doing some work around the class text or taking part in reading activities (Early Years). Please try and visit as many classes as you can.