At Wath Central we believe that every child has the right to read. Reading is an essential life skill that is key to children accessing many areas of the world around them. From entering school we place high importance on developing reading skills to enable children to access and discover the world around them. Through school children can enjoy texts shared as a whole class, by reading in groups, reading individually and reading across the curriculum.
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Progression of Skill
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Learning to Read - Reading to Learn
From Foundation Stages up to Year 6 we introduce the children to a wide range of books, genres and authors through high-quality, engaging texts. We ensure that these texts link closely to our curriculum and feed into different concepts. Carefully chosen texts are placed at the heart of our English Learning Journey and we use these texts as vehicles to steer reading into writing. These texts are accessed and unpicked as a whole class allowing children opportunities to engage in meaningful discussions about characters, content and meaning.
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Reading Comprehension
A confident reader is not only able to decode the words presented on a page but has a secure understanding of what they have read. To develop reading comprehension skills alongside fluency skills we focus on the development of the skills link to the reading content domain. In Foundation Stage –Y1 these skills are explored through questioning and discussions when sharing texts during our Little Wandle reading sessions. Children in Y2-Y6 complete regular reading session where specific skills are explicitly taught to support children developing a secure understand of what they read. These skills are applied in our English journey as well as other areas of the curriculum.
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Reading for Pleasure
At Wath Central we want our children to discover their own genuine love of reading. In order to do this, we have in place a variety of ways to show them that reading is, above all, fun! We believe that books have the power to take children on adventures to many place and to explore key life concepts in an imaginative and creative way. Children are exposed to high quality texts and all year groups have dedicated time spent to share texts together every week.​​
Pupil Roles
Our children to play an active role in the promotion of reading in school, by carrying out the following roles:
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Reading Buddy’s – our Y6 children have opportunities to share a story with the children in FS2
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Reading Ambassadors – children who collect results for our reading challenges, support with the organisation of events in school including book fairs and throughout the year will take part in discussion on how to promote reading in school.
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Book Fair Champions – children who organise and run our, twice yearly, school book fair.
Reading events
We enrich our children’s experience of reading by celebrating many reading events throughout the school year. Some of these are listed below:
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World Book Day – Every year we promote enjoyment for reading through the celebration of World Book Day by dressing up and completing reading themed activities.
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International World Book Day – This is an opportunity for children and staff to choose and share with others in school a text they enjoy and spreads the passion for reading too.
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Book Fairs – We hold a number of book fairs throughout the year and these are led by our Y6 Reading Ambassadors. Offering a wide selection of texts they offer something for all interests. We always schedule in time for classes to visit the book fair.
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​Author Visits – We encourage author visits into school to spark imagination and creativity in children. These offer our children exciting opportunities to meet the people behind the words and illustrations of a book. We have also linked up to authors using social medial to enhance the teaching of texts in class or linked to our concept curriculum.
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Local Library links - We have strong links with our local library who come into school to promote reading events including the Summer Reading Challenge.
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Importance of Reading
Research carried out by the National Literacy Trust highlights the importance of children reading. The research findings show that:
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of those children who never read outside school, just 6% are above the expected level of reading for their age
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8–11-year-olds who enjoy reading very much are four times more likely to read at the expected level for their age than children who do not enjoy reading at all
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children who don’t enjoy reading at all are ten times more likely to have fallen behind and be reading below the expected level for their age than children who enjoy reading.
Reading at Home
Research shows that a child who reads for pleasure every day greatly increases their life chances. At Central, we encourage children to read regularly at home as well as in school. Home learning resources and ideas can be found below:
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