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.
At Roseberry we teach the specific skills of decoding through a whole school consistent approach using Letters & Sounds i.e. phonics. Daily phonics sessions take place every day from Nursery to Year 2. Junior pupils may also access phonics teaching through ‘Word Fun’ lessons in which they learn spelling patterns taken from The National Curriculum. Phonics sessions are interactive and fun to enthuse children about reading from an early age.
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 WBD 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: Reading Picnic. Our first Roseberry Reading Picnic was due to be held on the field during the Summer term of 2020. Unfortunately for us, Covid-19 had other plans! We will rearrange this for the future and envisage it to be a whole school picnic on the field where parents and carers are invited to come along and share in the beauty of reading for pleasure outdoors with their children.
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.
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.
Guided or whole-class reading
Depending on the age of children, we provide daily guided reading group sessions or whole-class reading sessions. We have found success with both strategies and feel that there are benefits to both approaches.
Author visits
We often invite authors to come into our school to work with the children. Most recently, Claire Barker, author of the ‘Knitbone Pepper’ series visited us and regaled children with stories of her dogs and writing practices.
Paired reading
Every fortnight, 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.
