Reading Intent, Implementation and Impact

At Prince Rock Primary School, our intention is to provide an outstanding reading education for our community of readers at Prince Rock. Our reading curriculum is ambitious, consistent and meaningful, which is delivered by knowledgeable and enthusiastic teachers and support staff. This is rooted in a desire to for children to develop a love of reading and the enrichment that brings to life. Reading development is coherent and adapted to scaffold learners to be successful and to challenge all children at their point of learning. Reading unlocks the rest of the curriculum for the children. We aim to create a life-long learners by reducing barriers to learning, now and in the future, and enable them to have positive engagement in the world. Cultural capital is at the heart of our curriculum so that our students make a positive contribution to all societies - this includes our school, the city in which we live, our country and the world. 

For our school, reading is a main priority. With this in mind, we use a robust and systematic phonics scheme: RWI. Our high-quality phonics teaching helps children develop their reading, writing, spelling and general communication skills. It also helps secure the crucial skills of word recognition that enables children to read fluently. This approach ensures all children and their abilities are targeted and supported throughout their reading journey at Prince Rock. This provides a strong foundation and when children complete the RWI programme, they continue their phonics journey through whole class reading which focuses on the development of vocabulary, fluency skills and background knowledge.

We aim to:

• Develop understanding and skills to become independent, enthusiastic readers.
• Allow children to access age-relevant texts
• Understand that language they have acquired, may be relevant across all areas of their learning and to apply that language where possible.

In direct reference to National Curriculum and Ofsted expectations, we will ensure that:

• Direct, focused phonics is taught every day in Reception, Y1 and Y2 in the autumn term
• Children read from books with the sounds they know, while they are learning to read
• Teachers and teaching assistants provide extra practise through the day for the children who make the slowest progress (the lowest 20%) through responsive and scheduled interventions
• All children in Year 2 and above can read age-appropriate books
• Teachers instil in children a love of literature: the best stories, non-fiction texts and poems

Implementation of EYFS Curriculum

The aim of the Early Years reading curriculum is to help practitioners to support children’s learning and development by closely matching what they provide to each child’s current needs. This is underpinned by developing positive relationships, the development of enabling environments and celebrating the uniqueness of every pupil.

Children begin their phonics journey on day one of entering Year R. They develop their understanding letter sounds and oral blending. Following this, children will begin to segment sounds in simple words and blend them together. Our children will develop an association between sounds and letters and begin to read words and simple sentences. By the end of this first phase of their journey, our children will be able to read simple sentences, use their developing phonics knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately, as well as some common irregular words. We use RWI as our systematic synthetic phonics programme. 

Implementation of KS1 Curriculum

As the children move into KS1, they will continue to consolidate and build on the EYFS curriculum through the development and application of their early reading skills. The continuation of the RWI phonics program will develop our children’s phonic skills further through the exposure of additional sounds and learn to apply these within a variety of reading opportunities, contexts and genres. In addition to a robust reading curriculum, children in KS1 will have the opportunity to hear, discuss and share a wide range of high-quality books to develop a life-long love of reading and further support the development of their vocabulary, background knowledge and their ability to comprehend a wide range of texts. During this stage, skills and strategies to support reading for meaning will be developed to enable our pupils to explore, analyse and respond to a wide range of texts. Furthermore, this will aid their reading stamina, acquisition of language and repertoire of text types.

Implementation of LKS2 Curriculum

As the children enter this LKS2, they will further build on their love of reading through the selection of age-appropriate books which are of interest. High quality teaching will be used continue to develop their vocabulary as well as the breadth and depth of their reading, making sure that they become independent, fluent and enthusiastic readers who read widely and frequently. To develop reading for meaning, our children will learn how to explore and analyse the language, structure and content of texts and develop the skills and strategies to respond to these through regular reading sessions. Building on the premise of key stage 1, all children will have exposure to stories, poetry, playscripts and non-fiction texts with an increased emphasis placed on sharing, discussing and justifying views and opinions drawing on their understanding of the text. A focus on fluency continues to be a focus. 

As the children enter their final two years of their journey in our school, they will continue to explore all genres of reading with accuracy and at an effortless and reasonable speaking pace. They will begin to read fluidly with an increased understanding of word meaning, choice of vocabulary and the contextual use of language in order to support the development of their background knowledge. As they continue their journey within key stage 2, our children will be taught how to prepare readings, use appropriate intonation, summarise key events and present their justification of opinions. To this end, the skills and strategies taught throughout their journey will be built upon to enable our pupils to respond confidently to texts with evidence and reasoning.

To continue to promote reading for pleasure and the gathering of information, our children will be encouraged to read widely and frequently, both inside and outside of school using our Reading Spine. Within school, sharing quality texts with our pupils continues to enable all our children to experience a range of language and writing styles.

Impact of the Reading Curriculum

In order to measure the impact of our reading provision, we complete regular monitoring and assessment. First and foremost, we ensure that all teachers complete high-quality formative assessment in the form of responsive teaching within every lesson and within subsequent, follow up lessons to ensure all gaps, misconceptions and errors are noted and addressed. 

Furthermore, we complete summative assessment: Termly Pupil Progress meetings, INSIGHT data tracking , baseline RWI assessment in R and for all new entrants, half termly RWI assessments for all children on the programme, mock PSC half termly practice in Y1 and Y2 (for those who did not pass the screening in Y1), phonics screening at the end of Year 1, phonics screening at the end of Year 2 (for those who did not pass in Y1), REN reading monitoring, STAR reading quizzes, Year 2 NC tests, Years 3, 4 and 5 optional tests (NFER), Year 6 NC tests and the use of reading records.