READING
Reading is essential for all subject areas and improves life chances. Positive attitudes to reading and choosing to read have academic, social, and emotional benefits for children.
At Paxton we want all our children to leave in Y6 as fluent and confident readers. We seek to empower children through a high-quality, structured, and creative English curriculum. It is one which will enable all learners to communicate not just ideas, but also emotions and concepts, with others. Children are taught that there are different purposes, audiences and can adapt the way they communicate according to these.
Children will have access to a high-quality aspirational Reading curriculum, which promotes their development as passionate readers; where reading is used not just to develop children’s subject-specific knowledge, but to widen their understanding of their own and other cultures and societies. Children will experience the shared reading of a broad range of texts and be motivated to read more widely both inside, and outside of school. Children will build a strong appreciation that reading is both for gaining information across the curriculum, as well as being a pleasurable activity.
Children will be directly taught ambitious and increasingly complex vocabulary drawn from the books and texts read, as well as the wider curriculum, current events and the world around them. On leaving Paxton, Children will be able to readily make connections between texts, their lives and the wider world with confidence and increasing levels of sophistication. Children are taught to develop a strong understanding of grammar, punctuation and composition skills, that enables them to be both confident and enthusiastic readers and writers.
Through sharing their own love of reading, within and outside of their classrooms, teachers will demonstrate and nurture in children a sense of wonderment around books and reading. Children are read a wide range of texts to build their knowledge of people, places and things and to ignite a lifelong love of reading. Reading is brought to life through experiences and the use of technology, which provides children with rich experiences to discuss, make links and build upon previous knowledge.
From Reception, a rigorous programme of systematic synthetic phonics is taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds. This provides children with the tools to decode words, before building fluency and the ability to comprehend and question independently. As children move through the school, they are taught to predict, infer, ask questions, evaluate, clarify, summarise, and make connections through daily, structured reading sessions using ‘Destination Reader,’ a pedagogical based approach to teaching reading.
Children are afforded opportunity to participate in a wide range of learning experiences beyond their classroom. These experiences include trips to the local library, the theatre, museums, and community projects. We recognise that these experiences provide children with stimulating real-life experiences, which facilitates their reading, writing and speaking development. Children will have opportunities to meet and work with authors each year, to support their appreciation and build valuable social capital in knowledge and familiarising themselves with literature and potential future career pathways, it affords. Speaking and writing outcomes draw from knowledge gained in other subjects and English skills are linked with; and used to enhance learning elsewhere.
