Reading is one of life’s most essential skills. At Bollinbrook Primary School we hope that all children will develop a love of books, enthusiasm for promoting their reading skills and grow to be confident, competent readers.
We have worked hard to develop reading spaces around school for the children to use. Sponsored Reading Challenges have enabled us to resources these and we are really appreciative of how well these events are supported.
Each classroom has a dedicated reading area which includes a variety of class books (Fiction and non-Fiction) which the children can choose and read for pleasure. These appeal to different genders and also reluctant readers. A selection of banded books are also available in each class for use during independent reading.
In EYFS and Key Stage 1 children follow the Read, Write Inc phonics scheme and have a daily reading focus in class. Their early reading skills are supported by books matched to their phonic phases.
Once children have completed the phonics scheme, they move onto levelled books. These are carefully structured and designed to support the teaching in class and to ensure that when a child takes a book home they can read it successfully, build confidence and make progress. Once children have successfully completed the scheme, they can become ‘free readers’. This is a fantastic achievement to be celebrated and means children can choose their own reading book from a much wider range. However, this is still monitored for home reading choice in order that our children continue to get a varied and appropriately challenging reading diet. Our reading raffle draw encourages children to read frequently at home.
Across school, children have whole class reading sessions following the ‘Steps to Read’ programme. During these sessions they look closely at a text and teachers plan lessons to encourage the children to be more ‘active’ in their discussions. The focus of each session is to improve key reading skills through looking at vocabulary, inference, retrieval skills, making predictions, explaining and summarising what they have read.
We also ensure that there is daily reading aloud led by the class teacher in EYFS through to Year 6. Even in the year groups where pupils are confident in reading independently, we want them to experience whole books so that they meet books and authors that they might not choose to read themselves.
We also have a team of parent/carer reading volunteers assigned to each class so that every child is given the opportunity to read to an adult.
Please click on the links below for recommended reads for your child’s year group. There are lots to choose from.
If you have any questions about Reading at Bollinbrook, please do not hesitate to speak to our English Lead, Mrs Grindey or your child’s class teacher.