“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” Dr. Seuss
At Cavendish Close Junior Academy, our primary aim is to instil, within children, a lifelong love of reading. ‘Children, who enjoy reading, read more regularly and therefore improve as readers’ (Willingham, 2014). This simple fact sits at the heart of our reading curriculum. Our approach, therefore, balances the need to develop reading comprehension and fluency through explicit instruction and rigorous practise with the need to encourage a deep love of reading. Our approach to the teaching of reading can be summarised as:
- Developing reading strategies and skills: fluency, accuracy, understanding and quality response to different texts.
- Reading and enjoying a variety of texts from a variety of sources: class reading books, reciprocal reading books, library books, independent reading books and books on screen.
- Creating a strong, embedded reading culture through a rich language environment within classrooms and the wider school environment.
- Delivering a structured and consistent approach to whole-class reading
- Rigorously monitoring and assessing children’s progress in reading and identifying those who require extra support and intervene at an early stage.
Research shows that explicit teaching of reading strategies improve children’s comprehension (Rosenshine, 1997; EEF, 2017). Therefore, our reading curriculum prioritises rigorous and explicit instruction in key reading strategies through whole-class reading sessions, where group and paired discussion is encouraged and facilitated and modelled by the teacher. We aim to enhance Cultural Capital through exposure to a wide range of challenging text types and authors across the whole school curriculum. Children need to learn to read to be able to read to learn and that philosophy is at the heart of reading at Cavendish Close Junior Academy.
The ACE curriculum through reading…
Reading helps children to aspire by assisting them to work towards long term goals and dreams for their future; it helps them to discover new things by enabling them to educate themselves in any area of life they are interested in and to do their own research and thinking. It is through reading that children learn about new places, people, and events. Reading at Cavendish Close helps build self-confidence and cultural capital through access to a wide variety of texts genres and themes. Our reading approach celebrates achievements and boosts our children’s confidence in reading through the Trust ‘Read, Achieve, Succeed’ initiative. We want all of our children to be the best they can be; to be motivated and strive to achieve challenges.
Reading helps children to collaborate with people that they may usually struggle to understand. Through a collaborative approach to whole class reading sessions, children learn how to work with others and develop their teamwork skills. In addition, children are expected to listen to each other, read aloud with respect, respond to questions and listen to others’ points of view with tolerance. Reading experiences expose children to new ideas and beliefs; it helps to make them tolerant and appreciative of other perspectives. It helps to improve communication, both written and spoken, as children are regularly encouraged to share their responses to books. Children working at the stage of early reading, work together to develop their phonics knowledge, skills and understanding in bespoke groupings. The work with our new resident author, Katherine Wheatley, is a new collaboration based around sustainability and enhancement of the whole reading experience, with an exciting book week launch.
Children have a positive experience of reading as we aim to create an environment where reading is valued, promoted and actively encouraged. Children experience different places to read like the newly refurbished library, playground benches and the outdoor reading cabin. A range of different experiences are planned throughout the year to engage children in reading, such as: World book day events (Korky Paul in 2020 and Katherine Wheatley in 2021), 20 books to read by the end of Year 4 and 6 challenge, class author afternoons, inter-class reading challenges for Accelerated Reader and MyOn, weekly reading focus in merit assembly, reading rewards, reading with local under 23s footballers, class readers and book fairs.
Through all of these, our children are able to become ACE readers.
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