Reading Intent

At Abbey Mead Primary Academy we believe that reading is one of the most important skills our children need to access the curriculum whilst also being a vital life skill. We know that confident readers can access a wide range of life experiences and enjoy a breadth of genres. It is important that we help our children to become competent in the skill of reading, understanding what they have read and also empowering them to love and appreciate reading for life.

To enable this to happen, we aim to keep reading interesting and accessible for our pupils. We use a range of teaching strategies and initiatives through our everyday practice, creating an ethos that positively promotes reading.

How we support Reading at Abbey

Phonics

We use The Partnership Phonics Programme to support our pupils who are starting out on their reading journey. As their understanding of decoding becomes more competent, our focus changes to comprehension and the understanding of what is being read.

Shared Reading

Shared reading is taught as a whole class where the teacher reads a text to the pupils. The text may be based at a higher level than the individuals in the class currently read at. This is to promote more exciting, challenging texts to pupils and to develop their skills of inference and deduction. As a class, the children explore a comprehension task or type of question and then the teacher will follow up this skill in a guided reading session.

Guided Reading

All pupils at Abbey receive an adult led guided reading session in their class over a two-weekly cycle. During guided reading, teachers focus on extending pupils reading skills through carefully planned reading tasks that are linked to their age and reading stage.

Accelerated Reader

Accelerated Reader is an online program that we use to monitor reading practice and progress in KS2. Pupils take part in individual quizzes which then provides an accurately ranged text pupils can access. Pupils then have the opportunity to choose their own texts from the library within the range they were allocated.

Building Reading Miles

Each class has an enrichment box tailored to suit the interests of the pupils and they also have access to a range of texts based on their half-termly topic. In English, we follow a novel-led curriculum which allows pupils to fully immerse themselves in the text. The library offers a range of texts that children can choose based on their interests alongside levelled Accelerated Reader books.

How you can support your child with reading at home

Reading Diaries

Hearing your child read at home allows you to actively engage in your child’s reading journey. Every time you hear your child read it is essential that you sign their reading diary so that they can earn Dojo Points!

X (Twitter)

Look out for reading tips for parents and challenges that you can partake in as a family at home! We would love to see you upload pictures of your family challenges on X. Make sure to tag us @AbbeyMead_TMET

Useful Reading Links:

Reading tips from BookTrust
https://www.vooks.com/
https://www.getepic.com/
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/find-a-book/library-page/