Reading

Reading is at the forefront of our curriculum at Sithney School and teachers strive to ensure that the children develop a love of reading and books as soon as they enter our school.  Opportunities are provided daily across all age groups through the use of high quality, age appropriate texts that have been hand picked by class teachers and these are used during guided reading and English lessons.  
 
When ensuring that pupils are successful and develop that love for reading, in Reception and Key Stage One the children are grouped according to their ability for phonics and guided reading sessions.  Children are regularly assessed using the Read, Write Inc program which supports phonics and reading.  Texts chosen are suited to their developing phonetic knowledge and reading skills are at a level that ensures children are successful in engaging with texts. Their home reading books are also matched according to their reading development and tie in closely to sounds and words learnt in school during their phonic and guided reading sessions. 
 
Both pupils in Key Stage One and Two take an active role in their learning.  They are taught skills to develop their understanding of vocabulary, their comprehension skills (segmenting, blending, retrieving information, inferring, considering author’s choice etc) along with summarising and note-taking of the texts they have read. This promotes excellence and an enjoyment in reading.  Teachers provide opportunities that allow pupils to read for enjoyment whereby they can consolidate the phonics learnt as well as develop their decoding and fluency skills, understand the importance of sentence construction and vocabulary, and interpret and understand texts using higher level comprehension skills. (See 7 aspects of reading document for more detail)