Reading

Our vision for reading is that children leave KS1:

• with a true love of reading and quality texts;
• able to decode and reading fluently with good comprehension skills for their age;
• understanding what it means to be a good reader and with a belief that they are good readers;
• frequently choosing to read for pleasure;
• with a good knowledge of books and authors;
• having experienced our top Pinewood favourite children's books per year group (brilliant books).

 

If pupils cannot read with accuracy, automaticity and understanding, they will fall behind their peers and be incapable of accessing the curriculum as they move through primary school. Reading accurately, decoding and fluency must be given total priority in early years and KS1. Children take home books to read according to their book band level but they also take a book home each week to read for pleasure from our super duper double decker library bus. Throughout the school day there are many opportunities for reading. Children experience reading in many different ways - through class big book and shared reading sessions, individual reading, guided reading, opportunities to read stories individually or with a friend on the library bus and children have opportunities to experience the best of stories in their classes at story time. We are a school that prioritises reading.

But we need the help of parents too. Daily practice of reading leads to automaticity. You could compare the reading process to driving a car. When we drive, it becomes so natural over time that we do not even have to think about changing gear, indicating or using the pedals.  We need this level of automaticity in children's reading and phonics. We want them to be so fluent with decoding words that their working memory is freed up to focus on the meaning of what they're reading.

Reading is so important to us at Pinewood and our children leave us as super readers!

This is the order of the book bands:

 

Take a look at the link to our library bus - we really enjoy choosing our own books and reading on the bus throughout the school day. 

We love our children to read at home and we have a reading track in every classroom to encourage this!  Every time a child reads at home, they move up on our reading track.  At every multiple of 10 the children reach a picture of one of our brilliant books (these are some of our top books from our brilliant book list that we will share with the children at story time).  They receive special treats - stickers, class tickets, dojo's, bookmarks at these multiples of 10! After reaching 100 reads the children receive a certificate and a bookworm badge during a special assembly! If children read 150 times at home during the school year, we invite these children to an amazing reading camp in the Summer Term!  Check out your child's class page to see who has reached a special milestone!

The links to some of our year group brilliant books we like to share with the children are below.  We have carefully chosen these books from our personal favourites and these are books that we love sharing and discussing and are appropriate for these different year groups.  Take a look, you might want to share some of these with your child/children at home!