Reading at Frodsham Weaver Vale

Our Curriculum Intent for Reading

Fluent and Analytical Readers

At Frodsham Weaver Vale, our aim is ensure that, every child is given a wealth of reading opportunities, which will enable them to acquire the knowledge and skills which are prerequisite  to  becoming  fluent  and analytical readers.  Once children have developed reading fluency, promoting skills of inference is at the forefront of what we wish to achieve.

A Love of Books Across The Curriculum

Our children often do not readily pick up books beyond the school gates. We want to change this and therefore, we strive to promote the enjoyment of reading,  through the   careful selection of high quality texts. These are used as a vehicle for learning across the whole curriculum. Teachers use texts as a ‘hook’ or ‘stimulus’ in their English lessons and we use ‘Pathways to Write - the Literacy Company’ as the basis for our English planning.

Texts also feature in many of our other curriculum subject lessons; therefore, it is imperative that we are equipping  our children with the skills to read, so that they are then able to transfer these skills, and broaden their knowledge in a range of subject disciplines.

In the upper juniors, First News texts are a major vehicle here.

Developing Vocabulary                                                                      

By being immersed in a plethora of high quality texts and through direct vocabulary focuses within lessons, our children encounter a rich and varied vocabulary.  We want all our children to consider, experiment with, and to come to love words even when their life experiences beyond school, maybe an initial barrier.

Early Reading

In reception and KS1, children are encouraged to develop their reading fluency  by the careful selection of books which are matched  to the child's reading ability and phonics phase. Children are assessed regularly  using PM  benchmarking to ensure that their reading books allow for practise and an appropropriate level of challenge.

 At Frodsham Weaver Vale, phonics  is  taught as the key reading strategy to decode words in the development of  early reading.  In reception and year 1 children have a discrete phonics lesson each day.  They, along with year 2 children, then have a second reading session  where they have the opportunity to reinforce this learning  and put  their  developing skills into practise.

However, we aim to ensure that we do  not limit our children  and they  are encouraged to share books which promote discussion,  introduce authors and

allow for the development of other key reading skills and strategies  throughout these directed lessons and also as part of their daily   learning.