Skip to content ↓

Hazel Leys Academy

Reading

Home Reading

At Hazel Leys Academy, we give all children the opportunity to enter the magical world of books as we promote reading for pleasure as part of our reading curriculum. Children are encouraged to develop their own love of genres and authors and to review the books they have read. This enhances a love of literature across a range of genres and styles. This will, in turn, support children to produce written work, in all areas of the curriculum.

At Hazel Leys, we expect our children to read at home at least 3 times a week. Children who read 5 times a week will receive 5 house points for their team. Reading at home is a vital part of education as it builds a wealth of vocabulary as well as supporting retrieval and inference questioning.

Tips to support your children with reading at home:

  • Set reading time aside and ensure you have no distractions when reading.
  • Ask your child to choose a book as it will support children’s recommendations and the idea of book talk.
  • Discuss the illustrations, as this will support inference questioning.
  • Encourage your child to talk about the book.
  • Make it fun! Read in a funny voice, have a prop or show different actions.

Reading Rucksack

The ‘Reading Rucksack’ allows a child to take home a reading book, a sachet of hot chocolate and a packet of biscuits on a Friday. The bedtime story can be shared with siblings, parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, etc. The children are expected to fill out a book review inside the notebook and discuss the book they read when they return it on Monday morning. Children are expected to discuss feelings, actions, synonyms and antonyms and make predictions.

Big Cat Collins Books

Collins Big Cat is a whole-school reading programme that provides complete support for primary reading. Children will become fluent readers through hundreds of high-quality fiction and non-fiction banded books by award-winning authors and illustrators. In-depth teaching resources support you in developing and assessing key reading skills at all stages from early reading through to phonics, to guided, whole-class and independent reading for more confident readers

Image

 Intent:

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. It is a central part of every pupil’s life at our school. We want to instil a love of reading for our children from the very beginning of school life and we do this by ensuring that we deliver a high-quality Reading curriculum through a wealth of literature. Children build the knowledge and skills to become confident readers throughout their time with us and this is evident by their continuous engagement, desire to read for pleasure and their understanding of a range of texts, authors, and illustrators.  

For our children, learning to read and becoming a reader is a priority for us. We have developed our Reading curriculum to ensure all children have opportunities to and develop understanding in:

  • Using their Phonics to lift the words off the page  
  • Developing communication and language skills particularly by learning new vocabulary and key/familiar phrases  
  • Applying their Phonics to read words, captions, phrases, sentences and longer texts 
  • Daily Phonics, Reading and English lessons in EYFS and KS1 
  • Daily Reading and English lessons in KS2 
  • Reading as part of the wider curriculum  
  • Sharing books, authors and illustrators during daily read aloud sessions 
  • Opportunities to independently read and be immersed in a book 
  • Engaging in book talk: likes, dislikes, puzzles and connections  

Image

 

 Implementation:

Staff plan engaging reading lessons following the EYFS, KS1 and KS2 National Curriculum and high quality texts are selected to help form the unit of work.

All children are read to by an adult so that they develop a love for reading. Books are selected by teachers to ensure that there is a link with other areas of the curriculum as this will support the language and vocabulary for the specific topic, as well as allowing the children to access quality texts to support writing genres. 

We have introduced the Big Cat Collins Reading Scheme to support the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised scheme for phonics. Collins Big Cat is a whole-school reading programme that provides complete support for primary reading. Children will become fluent readers through hundreds of high-quality fiction and non-fiction banded books by award-winning authors and illustrators. In-depth teaching resources support staff in developing and assessing key reading skills at all stages from early reading through to phonics, to guided, whole-class and independent reading for more confident readers. 

          

All children are expected to read at home at least three times a week and take home reading books.

Guided Reading is taught daily in years 3-6, and they are planned by all teachers to teach a range of skills and techniques which enable children to comprehend the meaning of what they read and develop their understanding of different reading domains.

Around the school, you will find reading areas for the children to access, as well as outside reading areas. Subject specific books will be found in the reading areas to support vocabulary and knowledge based learning. 

A timetable is in place for all classes to visit the school library one a week. Whilst in the library, they are able to read for pleasure, ask and answer questions and listen to an adult read. 

The Academy Reading Ambassadors promote a reading culture throughout the school; they help in the library, choose and sort books, share ideas and share their favourite stories. 

Every Friday, a child from each class takes home the ‘Reading Rucksack’, which includes a bedtime story, a sachet of hot chocolate, a packet of biscuits and a notebook that includes a book review. This helps to promote reading for pleasure and a love for reading. Reading lead and SLT vigorously monitor reading through planning and book scrutiny, learning walks, pupil discussions and academy moderations.

 

 Impact: 

The impact of the implementation will show children make good progress in Reading, allowing children to access age-related texts and develop their English knowledge and skills in all curriculum areas.

Children will progress, recall learning and develop transferrable skills. Attainment in reading is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of EYFS, KS1 and KS2, as well as this termly assessments take place as a way of monitoring children’s progress and development and identifying children who need to be further supported to keep up.