Following a great deal of research and development over the past year, our reading progress has been good.  Staff and Governors advocate that reading is the linchpin of the entire curriculum offer. Children’s reading attitudes, motivation and enjoyment  is intrinsically linked to how well they succeed in reading from a very young age. Having books in the home is associated with both reading enjoyment and confidence. Of children who report having fewer than 10 books in their homes, 42% say they do not like reading and only 32% say they are 'very confident' readers. For children who report having over 200 books at home, only 12% say they do not like reading and 73% consider themselves 'very confident' readers. https://readingagency.org.uk/about/impact/002-reading-facts-1/

As teachers, it is important to identify ways to promote reading for pleasure and enhance reading motivation, attitudes and confidence.  It is vital children see positive role models for reading and have opportunities to engage with quality texts from a variety of authors and genres so they can find joy in reading.  Without achieving fluency in reading, before the end of Key Stage One, children are likely to be significantly impacted in their transition to the next stage of Education.

Intent

Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum at The Wilfred Owen School. We are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become fluent, lifelong readers, to develop a love for reading and read for pleasure on a regular basis. When they leave our school children will-

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage

We believe reading is key for academic success and want all our children to reach age related expectations or make accelerated progress from their starting point.

Implementation

At the Wilfred Owen School, we teach reading through

• Daily dedicated high quality taught phonics sessions from Nursery to Year 2
• Phonics intervention sessions for children in KS2 who did not pass the phonics check or who need additional support
•  Daily Guided Reading sessions with a focus on VIPERS skills. (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 in order to improve their comprehension of texts.) The children are exposed to a range of different texts and can demonstrate their understanding and thinking behind these.
• Children are read to each day by an adult to develop their love for reading for pleasure.
• Children are provided with a text rich curriculum. These high-quality texts expose the children to higher level vocabulary.
• All books are sorted by phonics stage or book banded. Children read a book that is appropriate to their level.
• All children in the school receive a high-quality book for their birthday.

Further information about the implementation of reading can be found in the guided reading  sub page.

Impact

Children will leave The Wilfred Owen School as competent readers. They can read books to enhance their knowledge and understanding of all subjects in our curriculum and communicate their research to a wider audience. They will have a thirst for reading a wide range of high-quality texts across the genres, participate in discussions about books and have an established love of reading for life.

This curriculum map links quality texts to the long term plan.

The map is under continual review as we move through the long term plan, to take into account new authors, new books and other texts which we are able to link to themes.

Not all texts are used in their entirety.  Some are used for extracts which provide a prompt or resources for writing and guided reading.

All books will be available in school for children to borrow if they wish to.  Money is put aside each year in the budget to update and purchase texts from this map and the top ten lists.