Reading At Westfield
At Westfield, pupils have the opportunity to read a wide range of books and genres that not only aim to develop their love of reading and grow their imagination but also develop their vocabulary, emotional intelligence, subject knowledge and widen their understanding of other cultures around the world.
Keystage 1
Phonics
At Westfield, we strive to teach children to become confident and enthusiastic readers by ensuring high quality teaching through our Phonics sessions. We believe that reading is a key life skill which is required for academic success. The teaching of Phonics is an integral part of the curriculum; across the school from Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1 and then to Key Stage 2. Our phonics is fully inclusive to every child as we provide a broad, balanced and differentiated approach. At Westfield, we also value and encourage the pupils to read for enjoyment and therefore promote a love of reading within a language rich environment.
As a school, we follow 'Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds Revised'. This is a fully systematic, synthetic phonics programme which aims to enable our children to become capable and fluent readers by the time they reach the end of year 1. We continue to revisit phase five GPCs from 'Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds Revised' in Year 2, to support our children in fully embedding their understanding of phonics and applying it to their reading and writing.
Assessment
We assess the children regularly to check their progress and understanding and to ensure that any misconceptions are addressed quickly. Formal assessments take place in week 6 of every term for all children taking part in the programme; informal assessment takes place during every session, where the class teacher notes which children require further support and whether any GPCs need to be readdressed in their weekly review session.
In Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, the children read daily in small groups, lead by an adult. The adults are highly trained in following the 'Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds Revised' reading programme, which focusses on three main areas:
- Decoding - the ability to segment and/or blend a word in order to read it.
- Prosidy - the ability to read with expression.
- Comprehension - the ability to understand the text
The children's reading books are fully decodable and matched according to their phonic knowledge. The children should be able to read the vast majority (90-95%) of the words within the text.
Keep-Up Sessions
Children who are finding it difficult to maintain progress within phonic sessions form part of our 'keep-up' groups. These sessions take place with a trained adult on either a 1:1 basis or group basis, dependent on need. The children accessing this provision are re-assessed regularly (usually after three weeks) to ensure they are making progress and identify next steps.
Reading - Key Stage 2
In Keystage 2, children continue to follow the 'Big Cat' books until they are secure and fluent readers. These books are directly linked to the Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds Revised' reading books to ensure a smooth transition from keystage 1 to keystage 2. Once children have completed the 'big Cat' scheme, they become 'Free Readers' and are able to select their reading books with increased independence. This is monitored by the class teacher to ensure that the books are still matched to the children's reading abilities.
In keystage 2, children are taught comprehension daily in class. Comprehension lessons are based on carefully chosen texts and pupils are taught a range of comprehension strategies to develop their reading fluency and understanding of the texts that they read. Full information can be found in our 'Comprehension' document at the bottom of this page.
Children in keystage 2 who are not yet secure in phonics form part of our 'Rapid Catch-Up' groups. These are designed to be short, fast-paced lessons to enable those children for home phonics is still challenging to make rapid progress and narrow the gap between them and their peers.
Assessment
In Reception, year 1 and year 2, we assess the children regularly to check their progress and understanding and to ensure that any misconceptions are addressed quickly. Formal assessments take place in week 6 of every term for all children taking part in the programme; informal assessment takes place during every session, where the class teacher notes which children require further support and whether any GPCs need to be readdressed in their weekly review session.
In years 3,4,5,and 6, the children are similarly regularly assessed. Initially, this is in the form of assessment for learning and is conducted throughout the week via strategic questioning and focus groups lead by the teacher. This is recorded for each pupil on the Assessment for Learning Gird and teachers base their on-going assessment on the VIPERS skills (see above). Teachers can then amend planning accordingly based on the weaker skills identified and on misconceptions developed. termly formal assessments are also used in order to assess pupils’ ability to apply the fluency skills and VIPERS taught throughout the term independently.
Reading At Home
Children bring their reading book home each day and we expect all of our children to read daily with an adult. We ask that parents record their reading sessions with their children in their child's yellow reading record, which should be brought into school daily. Class teachers monitor the reading records and certificates are given to those children who read regularly at home, at the 25, 50 and 100 read milestones. Children who are on the 'Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds Revised' programme bring home their decodable reading book and a 'reading for pleasure' book, which is for the children to enjoy with their parent. This is because we want our children to be exposed to a wide range of quality literature from an early age, and to encourage the children to foster a love of reading.
Further Information
For further information about reading at Westfield, please take a look at the information below. Additionally, you may wish to visit the 'Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds Revised' website, which has a helpful section on the website dedicated to parents. https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
