At St Wilfrid’s we are passionate about sharing our love of reading and developing life-long readers! High quality books are in class reading areas and in our library for the children to enjoy in school and at home. Class story time is a daily part of school life and books are embedded in our curriculum.
We value parents and carers’ roles as we all support and develop our children’s fluency and comprehension skills and passion for reading. Children benefit from daily practice and all of our children are encouraged to read aloud to an adult at home as part of their daily routines.
In EYFS and Key Stage One it is important that children’s reading books are aligned with the phonics work taught in class and we have subscribed to Pearson’s Bug Club which gives children access to digital books as well as physical books from school. This ensures that all children have immediate access to the book that matches their phonic learning for that week, as well as phonic games that give the chance to have extra practise within the relevant phonic phase.
As children progress through to phase 6 phonics, they will solely take home physical books. These are colour book banded to ensure that the children have progression of vocabulary and comprehension. There are a mix of reading scheme books and ‘real books’ that have been assessed and placed into their corresponding book bands.
It is really important that children develop their comprehension skills alongside their ability to read the words on the page so you may find that your child is able to read the words fluently but continues on the same Book Band colour for a while to enable them to focus on developing their understanding. Class teachers assess the children’s reading on a regular basis and will change their Book Band colour when they are confident that both the comprehension and word reading targets have been fully met.
The aim is not to race through the colours: each band offers a range of books which will help them in developing different reading skills. Book bands run through to Year 6, giving children the opportunity to read a real range of books that are appropriate for them and can challenge them in terms of vocabulary and comprehension in order to improve their reading skills.
All parents and carers of children working within phonics phases 1 to 5 are given access to their child’s Bug Club page. A parent’s guide is also available by clicking on the link below.
Children who require some extra support with reading have phonics intervention and may also benefit from our 1:1 Reading Partnership scheme which looks at developing fluency and comprehension skills.
In Key stage 2 children are encouraged to read at least 5 pages of their reading book to an adult every day and displays to encourage this can be seen around school. Reading challenges are also set to widen children’s reading habits and to encourage them to read a wide range of genres. Displays in our library are designed to inspire children to read widely as well as offering them a wide range of quality titles in their favourite genres. We are lucky to benefit from family and community members who help to hear readers or help run our library but we are always keen to hear from anyone new who would like to come into school to help!