Reading

For children who attend our school, parents can log onto our communication and behaviour platform, Class Dojo, to see what their child has been learning.

Little Wandle Phonics

At Roseberry we teach the specific skills of decoding through a whole school consistent approach using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised programme i.e. phonics. Daily phonics sessions take place every day from Nursery to Year 2. Phonics sessions are interactive and fun to enthuse children about reading from an early age.

Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 pupils also take part in Practice Reading Sessions three times a week as part of the Little Wandle programme. These sessions focus on developing decoding, prosody and comprehension skills.

To find out more about your child’s reading journey this year, please see the documents below from Little Wandle.
Reception- Your child’s reading journey Autumn term
Year 1- Your child’s reading journey

Junior pupils may also access phonics teaching through Little Wandle catch up lessons.

Here are some useful guides to support your child at home with the pronunciation of Phase 2, 3 and 5 sounds.

Phase 2 graphemes- pronunciation guide
Phase 2 graphemes- pronunciation guide part 2
How to say Phase 3 sounds
How to say Phase 5 sounds

The Little Wandle website also has some useful videos for parents, modelling the correct pronunciation of the sounds the children learn in their phonics lessons.

Whole class reading

Whole class reading is a shared approach to developing both fluency and understanding across a range of texts in KS2. Children work collaboratively to read aloud every day, discussing and analysing extracts from either the novel that is being read or a series of texts with a particular theme every week. This approach allows all children to take part in valuable peer talk and teacher led activities which are focused around the domains for reading in KS2.

Reading for pleasure

Above all, we endeavour to instil a love of reading in all children and focus on reading for pleasure across the school. We hold reading events every term where parents are invited to school to read with their children.

Autumn: Share a Christmas Story – children and their parents listen to the teacher read a Christmas story and then they undertake a Christmas craft activity together linked to the book

Spring: World Book Day – our school focus for World Book Day is traditional tales that the children may not have encountered before, e.g. Rumpelstiltskin, Aesop’s Fables. Children are tasked with a home-learning project before World Book Day e.g. decorate a pebble or a wooden spoon with a favourite book character or create a character mask. The children bring these to school on World Book Day to share with their class. Parents and carers are invited into school during the afternoon to read with their children. Families are grouped together for this reading opportunity.

 

Summer: Performance Poetry competition. Children across the school learn a poem and perform it to their classmates. Each class winner then performs to an assembly, including invited parents and school governors, and a winner is chosen. We have had some fantastic guest judges and wonderful performances over the years!

We regularly encourage reading for pleasure at home through tasks we set for the whole school. These have included such activities as a Reading Bingo sheet, Extreme Reading competition and a sponsored read to raise money for our school fund to buy more books in school.

Roseberry’s Reading Shelf

We encourage our children to read at home and develop a love for reading. We send each of our children home with two/three books a week to share with their parents/carers. Children who read for 15 minutes three times a week are entered into our prize draw and could win a reading book of their choosing.

Bedtime Stories

Every Friday, children in EYFS and KS1 take home a ‘Bedtime Storybook’. These books are for parents to read to their child and explore together.

Book Group 

Mrs Dunn and Miss Blakeney run a Book Group that has proven extremely popular with our upper key stage 2 pupils. Who wouldn’t enjoy the chance to sit down with friends to explore and discuss opinions on a shared text? Especially, when there’s an end of year tea party!

Book Fayres

Scholastic Book Fayres are well-supported by our children and their parents and families. We try to coordinate the Book Fayre with our reading events. The commission raised through these events are used to buy books to enhance our classroom libraries.

Author visits

We often invite authors to come into our school to work with the children. Most recently, Sarah Morrell, author of the ‘Molly’s Magic Brolly’ visited us and regaled children with stories of her life and writing practices.

Paired reading

Every week, each class pairs with another to share a book together. Younger children have the opportunity to be read to by an older child, or to practise their reading skills to an older audience. We have found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable activity for the children and they look forward to reading together in different areas around school.

Library visits

Each week, children from year 1 – year 6 visit the school library where they can browse the large selection of books and choose a book to take home with them to share with their family.

 

We also offer times for parents to visit our library to choose a book from our ‘Parents Sharing Shelf’. For more information about this, please contact out school office.

Recommended reads

 

Have a look at our list of 50 books we recommend you read before you’re 11 3/4 – 50 books to read