Reading
READING
“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato
Implementation
Reading is at the heart of all learning and we place a great deal of importance on children learning the skills of reading as well as developing a love for reading.
We run daily guided reading sessions in every class that help children develop many different aspects of reading. The skill of reading involves word recognition but also understanding what is being read: this is called comprehension. We use Cracking Comprehension in every class for guided reading. This resource ensures the children have access to a wide range of texts from classic stories, non fiction texts to poetry. There is something for everybody to enjoy ! The children are able to work as a class, work in pairs to support each other and at times work on their own. During guided reading sessions children complete comprehension tasks around the text for that week and have opportunities to work in smaller groups with the teacher to discuss their thoughts and interpretations.
Children also access Bug Club , which enables them to read texts at their own level, ensuring a constant development of word reading skills. There are also comprehension tasks built into each text.
During English lessons we continue teach children a range of strategies to help them to read words, but also how to understand the meaning, We have separate inference lessons for children who complete the phonics scheme – this is where children are taught how to look for meaning through the authors’ use of language. Teachers ask lots of questions to help develop your children’s understanding. Find below a link to each year group, which will show you a range of questions that you can use at home when reading with your child, as well as giving you an idea about what we do in school.
Each class has a selection of fabulous, quality texts that we use throughout the year. We ensure that children have access to read and be read to regularly and enjoy whole texts and not just extracts from texts. Here is our literacy spine, it is a list of some of the wonderful texts that we use in each year group. Some texts we use to teach from and some we read purely for enjoyment.
We are ensuring that our curriculum builds on children’s knowledge and understanding year upon year. This reading ladder shows progression in the reading curriculum
Helping your child at home with their reading
We have an ‘active learn’ account for every child to access their BUG CLUB. On their bug club page they will find a number of books that have been chosen by your child’s class teacher, so they will be at the right reading level for your child. For each book you read you will find a number of activities and games for you to enjoy too. Follow the link below and log in to start the fun!
Here are some suggested reading lists for you to enjoy with your child at home.
https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/tag/primary/
LOVE OF READING
We also have a reading spine for each class that shows some of the books we share with your children in each class. The children can also visit the library every week and choose a book that interests them. We have a monthly reading assembly where Mrs Clarke shares a fabulous story with all the classes. The latest book that was shared and enjoyed in KS2 was 'The Baranbus Project' and in KS1 'Just Friends' was a great success.
Year 3 and 4 went to Newton Heath Library on the 9th June to enjoy a story telling session with Coalesce Dance Theatre. The children went to watch 'The Old Green Time Machine' follows the journey of two intrepid and quirky time travellers in a race to save the world. In a future where all living things have been destroyed and all that is left is plastic, our two adventurers find themselves on an urgent mission. It's a shame their carbon friendly time machine bicycle has seen better days! This family friendly show is a whirlwind of contemporary dance, music, poetry and fun.
We try to enhance our children's love of literature through author visits, trips and online sessions.
Share a Story.
We have some NEW book trollies that will be on the playground on a Wednesday as school finishes. You can come and choose a book with your child, take it home to read and simply return it when you have finished. Each Wedneday you can choose a different book to take and read.
Up to now these are very trollies have been very successful - so come and enjoy a book together.
Reading Events at St. Wilfrid’s
WORLD BOOK DAY 2020.
What a fantastic day we all had for World Book Day! We had an Alice in Wonderland tea party for lunch, lots of book related activities in classrooms and a wonderful whole school assembly to look at each others’ costumes and choose our winners from each class.
Central library visit with our school librarians.
Tuesday 4th February 2020.
On a slightly wet and windy Tuesday morning, we braved the cold and traveled to Manchester on the Metrolink. For some children this was their first time on the metrolink and very exciting ? Once we got to Manchester we spent some time looking at the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and talking about suffragettes.
We had such a wonderful time when Jodie showed us around at Central Library. We started on the top floor and the librarians really enjoyed looking at all the reference books and the photographs of all the famous people linked to Manchester. We worked our way around the library looking at EVERYTHING ! Jodie even took us behind the scenes to a room which stored lots of older books. We were shown the special room where you had to sit if you wanted to look at old or precious books. We enjoyed the interactive displays and spent quite a bit of time in the beautiful reading room.
We all thanked Jodie very much for her wonderful tour and for the kind gifts. We have a few ideas that we are going to try to use in our library. We will let you know how we get on with our plan.
Our next journey, with the librarians, will be to visit John Rylands Library in Manchester.
We can’t wait !
Poetry week assembly
We have had a fantastic assembly this morning.
Every class from Nursery through to Year 6 have stood up and performed some poetry for us today. We’ve had fantastic rhymes and songs from EYFS, they have had chicks hatching in Early Years this week and they sang all about the chicks. Year 1 wrote list poems of what they found in the fairy godmothers bag ! Year 2 have been reading and writing poems about holidays and did a calligram poem for us. Year 3 chose poems that made them laugh – they made me chuckle too ? Year 4 have clearly been enjoying the work they have been doing about the industrial revolution and shared three poems with us this morning. Year 5 have been exploring a range of poems and chose some of their favourites and Year 6 wrote a class poem about courage and performed that for us.
What a fantastic morning, everybody has worked so hard and the poems the children have written and performed were AMAZING ! Well done everybody.
