"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." — Dr. Seuss
Reading Lead – Mr Steve Coles
Early Reading Lead – Mrs Michelle Nicholls
Berrycoombe School is passionate about reading and storytelling. It is at the heart of our curriculum because we know that the capacity to learn, and to enjoy learning, goes hand in hand with reading skill. Throughout a child’s journey through our school, we strive to nurture a lifelong reader; teaching word reading and language comprehension as children need both elements to become good readers.
It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education all children can read fluently, confidently and with understanding, in any subject, as well as have a love for reading. We aim to develop the Big Five: phonemic awareness; phonics; fluency; vocabulary; and comprehension (which are the interconnected and underlying components of a good reader).
We also aim for children at Berrycoombe School to love reading, choose to engage in a wide variety of texts and be motivated to continue reading and become life-long readers. This is because children who read more, and are therefore good at reading, learn more, expand their vocabulary and become academically more able.
Implementation
Link to the National Curriculum for Reading ---> English National Curriculum
Read Write Inc. Phonics
At Berrycoombe School we use the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme to develop the pupils phonological understanding.
Often imitated, never rivalled, Read Write Inc. Phonics is the UK’s number one systematic synthetic phonics programme. Children develop reading fluency and comprehension, spell and write with confidence and learn to articulate their ideas and understanding.
Created by Dame Ruth Miskin, it is a complete phonics programme used at Berrycoombe School from Little Berries Nursery through to the end of Year 1, and for children with SEND in older year groups, to develop them from non-readers to learning to read learners to finally reading to learn learners.
The programme includes daily phonics lessons and reading, spelling and writing activities. Delivered by our Read Write Inc. Phonics trained teachers and teaching assistants.
Here is an overview of the Read Write Inc. Phonics Programme progression at Berrycoombe School:
Reading Fluency
‘The ability to apply and identify the correct pronunciation of written words immediately and without conscious effort.’ – Education Endowment Foundation
At Berrycoombe School we have developed a systematic approach to teaching comprehension and fluency in reading beyond the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme. This systematic approach is less reliant on repeated practice and exposure to text to gain improvement and includes the repeated and consistent direct teaching of reading skills with accurately pitched practice for fluency and question response. The aim is for all pupils to be able to efficiently read at least 100 words per minute by the end of Year 6.
What are Vipers?
VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand to improve their comprehension of texts.
VIPERS stands for
Vocabulary
Inference
Prediction
Explanation
Retrieval
Sequence or Summarise
The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and pupils at Berrycoombe School are familiar with, a range of questions. They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.
At Berrycoombe School, the question domains the pupils respond to are informed Analysis of reading assessments undertaken at the end of each term indicates to the teachers from Year 2 through to Year 6 the focus areas of content domain to which they will teach the following term. Questions for children who have just finished RWI will be weighted towards retrieval.
Here is an example of the teacher’s plans:
Reading Fluency sessions are 30 minutes long and takes place 3 times a week at the same time when the Read Write Inc. Phonics sessions are held. This enables children to be mixed in to ability groups at whole school level.
This is what a lesson looks like:
Accelerated Reader
At Berrycoombe School we value reading for pleasure and view it as an essential part of developing a love of reading in children. To ensure this, children who have graduated from the Read Write Inc. Phonics Programme are timetabled 30 minutes each day to read for pleasure via the Accelerated Reader programme.
Accelerated Reader guides pupils at Berrycoombe School to books that are most likely to catch their interest. Every student has an individual reading difficulty range, helping them find a ‘just right’ balance between reading success and challenge. Upon finishing a book, readers take a quiz to monitor their comprehension. The quiz gives them instant feedback to help them progress.
Pupils can self-select titles that suit their interests, age, and ability to help each one read for pleasure. Quizzes and targets build a regular, quality reading habit, encourage daily practice with friendly prompts, and help celebrate success at school and home.
Reading for pleasure opens the door to high-quality reading practice. Reading quizzes monitor comprehension, while literacy skills and vocabulary quizzes extend student learning and build literacy skills. Accelerated Reader also supports non-fiction reading, including short articles that allow pupils to practise key skills easily.
Interactive reports reveal how much a student has been reading, at what difficulty level, and how well they have understood their books. They also promote reflection on any trending issues. Pupils and staff can see how many words they have read over time and track each reader’s progress in increasingly challenging texts.
Class Novels
To further develop a love of reading and links to the wider curriculum, each class has a novel linked to the wider curriculum which is read to the pupils for 15 minutes after lunch. The class novels should be challenging. The pupils should be able to access it, but it should be a text that many of the class could not sit and read cover to cover independently. During these sessions, only the class teacher read the class novel aloud so that children can be fully immersed in the story. All children have a copy of the book and follow as the teacher reads.
Here are our Class Novels overview: