Intent

At Swaffham C of E Primary Academy, nothing is more important than making sure that every child can read.  We are determined that every pupil will learn to read, regardless of their background, needs or ability and that all pupils (including our lowest attaining readers) will make sufficient progress to meet or exceed age related expectations. We know that reading is fundamental to a child’s life as it allows them to learn, discover, explore and to connect to the culturally rich and diverse world that they belong to. At Swaffham Primary Academy, reading is immersive within our environment and curriculum; we ensure that we provide dedicated teaching time to reading which involved sharing the love of books, decoding and comprehension. We used expert teaching to provide children with engaging lessons to ensure that they have the skills to decode. As well as constantly assessing children who are learning phonics to identify gaps or misconceptions with their phonics learning. We also monitor and assess children within Year 2 and KS2 to ensure everyone is having their reading needs met. Throughout this document, this will show the strategy that we implement to ensure that all children are being supported to make progress with their reading so they will believe in their ability and shine as enthusiastic, confident, fluent and motivated readers at home and in school.

Implementation

Reading lessons

We use a highly engaging phonics programme of ‘Jolly Phonics’ which is a government validated systematic synthetic phonics programme. The children learn phonics through song, actions and stories which helps them to interact and be active in their phonics learning. This helps them to embed the sounds and become confident in using phonics to decode their reading. In Reception, the children have daily lessons phonics lessons and then have time throughout the day to practise decoding, blending and segmenting through reading decodable books that match the current phonics level that they have been learning and practising through writing. In Year 1, the children continue to have daily phonics lessons for 25 minutes which are built through Jolly Phonics and Jolly Grammar where they look at a particular sound per week to allow time for consolidating and refining their knowledge of decoding and phonics.

Children in Year 2 begin the year by recapping phonics sounds before moving on Reading Masters. Reading Masters are reading lessons that have a focus on reading skills. Reading Masters is taught four times a week which are 20 minutes long. These are sessions that provide children the time to discuss a range of texts, expose them to a wide range of vocabulary and focus on their comprehension skills.

Reading for pleasure

At Swaffham Primary Academy, we want all children to engage with and foster a love of reading. In EYFS, KS1 and KS2, staff spend time reading to the children to help to develop a love of reading. The children are given a range of time to help to build this love of reading during our All About Words sessions. These sessions can contain a range of activities such as: having time in the library, selecting the books that they want on the class shelves, develop language and exposing them to new vocabulary, time to talk about reading and opportunities to read aloud to practise fluency and prosody.

Reading at home

Our Reading Rambles have been introduced to engage children with their reading and provide a brilliant way for school and home to communicate about children’s reading. These encourage children to talk about what they have been reading, a story that they have loved and provide them with challenges to show what they have learnt about during their reading. In Reception and Year 1, Jolly Phonics reading books are sent home that are full decodable and match the sounds that the children have been learning. In Year 2, the children will be sent home a reading book that matches their reading age from a staged reading book and from Year 3, children will only use staged reading book where they still need to support their reading.

Assessment

In Reception, the children will complete a baseline assessment to assess their current understanding of phonemes. In the second week of the term, the teacher will begin teaching phonics by following the long term plan set out. Within the first few weeks, the teacher will be able to formatively assess the children that need to have more support with their phonics/reading. Throughout the long term plan that is shared with teachers, there are specific assessment points throughout the year to assess the progress and any gaps in their learning that they may have as well as ongoing formative assessment through daily lessons and one to one reading.  They will also assess the children at four different points in the year using our own ‘Swaffham Primary Academy Jolly Phonics Assessment’. From each assessment point, children will be identified who are our ‘lowest attaining readers.’ At the end of the year, the children will be assessed with the official Jolly Phonics Reading Assessment to give them a reading age.

In Year 1, children will complete 3 practise phonics screening test to help identify the children who will need support with their phonics and will use the Swaffham Primary Academy Jolly Phonics Assessment to find gaps with sounds or misconceptions that may have with blending or segmenting. After each phonics screening test, the data will be analysed to find the children who are the ‘lowest attaining readers.’ At the end of the year, the children will be assessed with the official Jolly Phonics Reading Assessment to give them a reading age.

In Year 2, children will complete the official Jolly Phonics Reading Assessment 3 times a year (September, January and May) to provide a reading age. These reading ages will be assessed against their actual chronological age to find whether they correspond. Any children that have a reading age that is 6 months below their chronological age will be identified as one of our ‘lowest attaining readers’.

In Year 3 - 6, children will complete Salford Tests 3 times a year (September, January and May) to provide a reading age. These reading ages will be assessed again their actual chronological age to find whether they correspond. Any children that have a reading age that is 6 months below their chronological age will be identified as one of our ‘lowest attaining readers’.

Supporting our lowest attaining readers

By identifying our lowest attaining readers, teachers will identify how they can support them within class through high quality teaching and identify whether there is additional support or intervention that will help the child to progress with their reading. Below are some examples of what support is given to the children.

EYFS and KS1

• Small group work
• Extra reading with an adult
• Additional phonics intervention
• Working with home e.g. sending home flashcards
• Revisiting sounds

KS2

• Individual reading with an adult
• Daily Phonics groups for 20 minutes a day
• Small group work to develop reading strategies
• Nessy

Impact

Once all reading assessments have been completed in September (Autumn Term), as specified above, all staff will be notified about who their lowest attaining readers are. They will have to monitor and put into place how they are going to support these children to make progress with their reading. They will document what they have done to support the children in class through high quality teaching and any additional support or intervention that they have put into place. At the beginning of the spring term, the reading assessments will be completed again to provide a new reading age. These spring term assessments will be monitored and compared to the autumn term reading ages to see what progress has been made and the impact of the support that they have been given. Through having pupil progress meetings, these will be discussed with the staff to see if there needs to be additional intervention.