Reading at Windwhistle Primary School

We want our pupils to develop a love of reading that will be a lifelong pleasure for them.  Evidence suggests that children who read for enjoyment every day not only perform better in reading tests than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures.  In fact, there’s evidence to suggest that reading for pleasure is more likely to determine whether a child does well at school than their social or economic background.

 There are two main aspects to learning to read:

• that the reader recognises and understands the words on the page (that is, word recognition or decoding)
• the development of language comprehension (that is text is understood and interpreted)

 So, at Windwhistle we have a team of staff who ensure that children’s reading skills are developed to their maximum, alongside a range of opportunities to read for pleasure including an enthusiastic librarian who runs the library at lunchtimes and after school as well as working with groups of children every afternoon.

We have taken a series of actions to make this happen:

• Every child working within the Letters and Sounds phonic phases has a high quality daily 15-20 minute discrete, interactive phonics session
• We use Oxford Reading Tree Reading Scheme as a core scheme
  
• Better Reading Partners
  
• Booster Phonics
• Five Minute box
  
• Prioritising boys for reading intervention support (as they generally achieve less well than girls in reading)
  
• Parents from Reception learn activities they can use with their child at home to practise their phonics skills
  
• Promote the use of the library to boys with competitions
  
• KS1 visit the library at lunchtime with the play scheme leader
• Research including boys’ questionnaire, interviews and discussion groups to find out what would motivate them
  
• Purchasing reading resources other than books (eg comics and magazines) to attract less able readers, including Kindle trial in KS2
  
• Purchasing new texts to extend and interest more able readers