Reading

At Oakridge School, we put reading at the heart of the curriculum. We strive to foster a love of reading at school and at home. We believe reading is an entitlement that should enable children to connect with some of the finest words ever written. It should open up a world of possibility and is a fundamental life skill, which, enables children to communicate effectively in all areas and equips them for the challenges they will face in the wider world. 

It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils can read fluently and with confidence in any subject. We intend all children to leave Oakridge School with a rich vocabulary that provides them with the ability to play and manipulate language, recognising the nuance of meaning and how language can be used for a range of purposes. We want children to have the confidence to be able to communicate effectively in a variety of situations both now and in the future.

 We therefore intend to encourage all pupils to:

• read widely across both fiction and non-fiction
• develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live
• establish an appreciation and love of reading
• gain knowledge across the curriculum
• develop their comprehension skills

We are committed to providing quality, vocabulary-rich reading material, which immerses and enhances all pupil’s wider knowledge of the spoken and written word, through modern and classic children’s literature and non-fiction texts. Children are encouraged to read widely and are exposed to a variety of genres. Reading across all subjects within the curriculum will prepare pupils for life beyond the Primary Classroom, where they will be taking with them the skills required for in-depth reading and analysing.

We believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves.

We cultivate the behaviours that they will need to be discerning readers as they read frequently and widely using self-regulation strategies and discuss what they read. This curriculum is delivered through synthetic phonics, a linked approach to shared and teaching of reading, home reading, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading and hearing quality texts read aloud every day through reading for pleasure. All of these are essential components as they offer the range of opportunities needed to develop fluent, enthusiastic and critical readers. 

It is important that children are motivated to read at home regularly; when their reading opportunities increase, so does their fluency and stamina, which in turn increases their enjoyment of reading. Therefore, the link between children’s motivation to read and reading for pleasure is reciprocal. Furthermore, we know that reading pleasure is beneficial not only for not only reading outcomes, but for wider learning enjoyment and mental wellbeing. Thus, we work hard to foster a love of independent reading and build communities of engaged readers. We understand the significance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills so we endeavour to build a home-school partnership, which enables parents and carers to have the confidence to support their children with reading at home. Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are committed to promoting a love for reading and not only giving children opportunities to read in English lessons, but in the wider curriculum too.

Children will receive opportunities to extend their learning beyond the classroom within our local area, including through links made with the local library. Other examples of enrichment activities for Reading include author visits, Reading challenges, celebrating Reading through World Book Day and parent workshops.

The curriculum documents that outline Reading at Oakridge are:

Reading Progression Grid

Curriculum Content Grid

Vipers Progression Grid

Phonics

At Oakridge School, we believe we have a moral duty to ensure that every child learns to read. We are committed to providing every child with high quality phonics to ensure they have the best possible start in reading and writing. We are dedicated to the delivery of excellence in the teaching of phonics and will continually strive to improve our practice until 100% of our children are confidently reading by the end of Key Stage 1. In order to read and understand texts, children must learn to recognise/decode words on the page. High quality phonics teaching allows the child to be secure in the skills of word recognition and decoding, which allows them to read fluently and develop a love for reading. The success of our phonics provision is dependent on consistent delivery. Since January 2022, we have therefore followed Read, Write, Inc. to provide a clear framework for all staff.

Aims:

• To set clear expectations around the teaching of phonics for all staff.
• To ensure consistency of approach.
• To raise standards with early reading provision in the school.
• To have all of our children reading confidently by the end of Year 1 and ready to access the wider curriculum.
• To outline provision for children in Key Stage 2 who require phonics intervention.
• To allow all staff and new staff to quickly familiarise themselves with phonics provision at Oakridge.

Key Principles

Read, Write, Inc. follows five key principles:

1. Praise – We use positive reinforcement to feedback and motivate our pupils. This is done concisely and non-verbally where possible to ensure pace is not affected.
2. Pace – Pupils are moved through the activities at an appropriate pace with strategies used to ensure all pupils can keep up. We want our pupils to “keep up not catch up.”
3. Purpose – Staff and pupils are clear on what they are doing and why.
4. Passion – Our staff model enthusiasm for reading and share this with the pupils.
5. Participation – We want all pupils engaged in their learning as much as possible. Read, Write, Inc. uses strategies that supports this principle such as partner talk instead of hands up, Fred Fingers, shaking heads when no ‘special friends’ have been identified, etc.

Writing

Intent

At Oakridge School, we recognise the crucial importance of delivering an English curriculum which not only provides pupils with the key learning listed in the national curriculum, but also develops creativity, imagination and a love for learning. Our core intent is for all pupils – irrespective of their needs, abilities or background – to learn to write fluently and develop their own writer’s voice. We foster a love of writing and communicating through vocabulary rich and high quality literature, using Ready Steady Write by Literacy Counts.

Implementation

Ready Steady Write uses vocabulary-rich texts to create a variety of writing opportunities. The books provide a wealth of opportunities including:

• to develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding to use and apply across the wider curriculum, through sentence accuracy sessions;
• explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identifying the purpose and audience;
• plan and write an initial piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of writing by editing and redrafting.
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To support all learning, we use a range of strategies including:

• Modelled writing – Teachers model the writing process including editing to demonstrate the high expectations they have. Teachers verbally ‘think aloud’ in order to make the writing process explicit and provide a rich and varied vocabulary for the children to utilise in their own work. This happens daily, through daily sentence accuracy, incidental writes and when pupils produce extended pieces of writing.
• Scaffolding - To develop writing ideas and language acquisition.
• Active reading and close reading – Teaching pupils to analyse text the closely, explore language features and structure so that pupils develop a deeper. Through active reading, we encourage our pupils to engage further with the text by questioning and making connections.
• Drama -  Pupils have the opportunity to engage in drama and discussion linked to the themes and characters within the book, before rehearsing writing skills within a range of genres.
• Editing - Using sentence checkers and modelling how to edit writing.

The Ready Steady Write curriculum map uses a clear progression map of key knowledge and skills from year 1 to 6. Grammar and vocabulary are embedded into lessons. As a result, skills are learnt within the correct context, resulting in more knowledge being stored in long term memory.

We have implemented the Read Write Inc spelling scheme which follows on from the phonics programme used in KS1. This programme meets the national curriculum expectations whilst linking back to prior knowledge taught in KS1.

We believe that all pupils should have the same opportunities. We aim to support our pupils who have English as an additional language and pupils with special educational needs through:

• High quality modelling
• Collaborative work with peers
• Lots of visual support
• Regular repetition of language features
• Word banks
• Scaffolds and supports to develop writing ideas and language acquisition
• flexible groupings to ensure peer support and appropriate level of challenge

To ensure higher levels of success with writing, at Oakridge we follow the following writing cycle:

1. Immerse: pupils are immersed in the Vehicle text where they enjoy and explore the text. They explore the purpose and audience.
2. Analyse: Children explore the text structure and language features.
3. Plan/Write: Children gather ideas for their own writing using the range of word banks they have explored in the immerse and analyse sections. Children then apply what they have learnt and produce and independent piece of writing where they draft, revise and edit.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is monitored through:

• Outcomes of KS2 tests
• Termly writing assessments
• Pupil voice 
• Subject leader monitoring - lesson visits, book looks, teacher voice, actions plans and governor reports