Reading
At King's Gate Primary School, we understand the importance of reading as a critical life-skill. In order to access all areas of the curriculum (and life), our children must be able to read.
The best way to ensure that our children become fluent readers is to instil a love of reading. We do this in several ways:
- Quality texts used to plan topics and themes
- Reading Challenges for all phases of the school
- A wide variety of phonically decodable books for early reading
- Reading is taught explicitly to whole classes
- Links with organisations such as 'School Readers'
- Reading to the children on a regular basis
Quality Texts
Books are purposefully selected to support our carefully planned curriculum to both enhance the learning and also expose our children to high quality texts across a range of genres and authors.
Regardless of reading ability, all pupils are supported to access these texts, which help provide context for their learning.
To see the current texts being used visit the relevant class page here.
You can also view the Knowledge Organiser that accompanies the text. Below are examples of some of the texts used.
Reading Challenges
To encourage reading within the school there are a number of challenges children are encouraged to participate in.
Fantastic Four
We expect children to read at home at least 4 times during the week. Two of the reads must be from the child’s school reading book, and two of the reads can be from any book of their choice.
Parents/carers need to sign their child’s Reading Record (FS2, Year 1 and 2) or Home School Record Book (Years 3-6) to acknowledge that they have read.
Home school/ Reading record books are checked every week (by the class teacher or teaching assistant) and for every 4 times that your child reads at home in a week (which runs from Thursday to Wednesday), they will achieve a stamp on their class chart.
Class Reading Raffle
Each class will also hold a weekly reading raffle. If children complete their four weekly reads, their name will be entered into the weekly reading raffle for the chance to win a prize. At the end of each week, all of the names from that week, will be entered into a termly raffle, and at the end of each term, two children’s names will be randomly drawn and they will each receive a brand-new book! The more fantastic four stamps they receive, the more times their name will be entered into the termly raffle.
Whole Class Reading
Reading is taught using a whole class approach with the the book used acting as context for both the wider curriculum and English.
This ensures that all pupils have access to high quality texts that are interesting and age-appropriate, regardless of reading ability, and provides opportunities for pupils to immerse themselves deeply into a range of core texts.
Typically, whole class reading lessons provide further opportunities for lots of discussion and talk around books and reading, which in turn, increases engagement across the curriculum and children's love of reading.
To support teachers in planning and assessing reading, we have developed a set of Reading Milestones for each year group.
Milestone Awards
To help sustain their reading habit, children also work towards the following awards across the year:
- At 12 stamps they receive a certificate,
- At 24 a book mark, and
- At 36 a star pin badge to wear on their school uniform.
100 Books Challenge
Each phase (KS1, and KS2) has a book list compiled of recommended books that cover a variety of genres and authors which the children are encouraged to read.
Lots of these texts are available in school where we have a growing collection in the classrooms as well as them being available in the local libraries.
'100 books' booklets are available to view and download on class pages.
