As Readers...

'That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.' - Jhumpa Lahiri

At Parkgate we believe that reading is a fundamental skill and is key to developing happy, confident learners. It is also key to developing the ability to be a lifelong learner. As well as the obvious academic attainment, it has been shown that the benefits of reading for pleasure go far beyond this and stretch throughout a person's life!

Our aim at Parkgate is to develop and embed a strong, sustainable reading culture within the school community. Confident and competent readers will foster a love of reading through a rich and varied experience of texts, in which they are empowered to exercise freedoms of choice and independence.

There are many opportunities for children to develop skills in reading at our school.

Floppy Phonics lessons

Teaching the sounds of letters to make words. Children are encouraged to segment (break up sounds) and blend sounds (put them back together to read).

Shared Reading

Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when children join in and share the reading of different texts.

Guided Reading/ Reading Lessons

Guided reading lessons in the earlier years are an opportunity for children to practise decoding, fluency and comprehension skills. Children in the group read the same text at the same time, though individual pacing may vary. English literacy is at the heart of our learning and teaching and essential to every area of the curriculum. Children are taught to read in a variety of ways. Each week, children read individually and in groups during guided reading lessons; they are also given regular opportunities to share a book with others.

Beginning in year 2, reading lessons move towards a whole class approach where lessons are planned and taught based on our Parkgate Reading Roles aligning to our reading progression document. (See links for both).

Accelerated Reader and 1:1 reading

During reading for pleasure time and home learning, children read books tailored to their decoding and comprehension ability. Children take quizzes to test their understanding of the text on a weekly basis with more summative assessments each half-term to check progress. Those children identified as struggling within this process are targeted weekly by the class teacher to ensure correct text matching and to give support and encouragement.

Story Time

Children have the opportunity to listen to a story being read to them on a daily basis. This highlights the importance of reading for pleasure at Parkgate and is based around the children's interests. This is a time for children to enjoy books, whilst providing language-rich experience and opportunities to develop vocabulary and comprehension skills.

Learning to read is about listening and understanding as well as working out what is printed on the page. Through hearing stories, children are exposed to a wide range of words. This helps them build their own vocabulary and improve their understanding when they listen, which is vital as they start to read. It is important for them to understand how stories work too. Even if your child does not understand every word, they will hear new sounds, words and phrases which they can then try out, copying what they have heard. Teachers read a huge variety of written material regularly with the children; fiction and non-fiction, stories, reports, diaries, poems etc. We believe in the importance of exposing children to classic texts at all ages.

Reading Schemes at Parkgate

Our main reading schemes in Key Stage 1 are a range of books from Oxford Reading Tree beginning with ‘Floppy’s Phonics Decodable’ range, moving onto the ‘Hero Academy’ fiction and non-fiction sets. In Key Stage 2, when reading fluently, children access quality texts from our Accelerated Reader library. In addition, we have a variety of other books which complement these schemes in each of the classroom reading spaces.

Accelerated Reader

At Parkgate, all children in Key Stage 2 take part in the Accelerated Reader programme which promotes engagement and progress in reading. Each half-term, children take a test which establishes their reading age and recommends which level of reading book they should be reading in order to make maximum progress. After completing a book, children take an online quiz to test their comprehension of the book, and if successful, move onto a higher level of reading book.

The children find this approach to reading enjoyable and engaging; - they are able to track their progress, challenge themselves and set their own goals. Achievements are celebrated by earning points, counting the number of words read and celebrating success in assembly with their peers.

National Curriculum for English (click on link below)