Reading
At Fen Ditton, we encourage reading through:
- ReadWrite.inc Programme
- Home Reading
- ‘Last and past’ Storybooks: contain sounds and words the children know. This is the Storybook they have just read at school and maybe some they have read before, for extra practice. Please don’t worry that books are too easy. Children enjoy re-reading stories they know well. Their speed and understanding improves on every read.
- Book Bag Books: matched to the Storybooks children read in school and used for extra practice. They include many of the same reading activities that we use in class and include parent guidance.
- Picture books to share with you: read these stories to children or encourage them to retell the story by looking at the pictures. They are not expected to read the story
Reading for pleasure has been promoted in the following ways:
- a number of author visits, a special day reading their work, using lesson resources they sent us and buying signed copies of their books etc after the author presentations.
- a special Michael Rosen day which included a special assembly from Michael Rosen and all day workshops arranged and conducted by him in partnership with other schools.
- book week
- special reading assemblies, – for example, teachers bringing in their favourite books and reading from them
- changing the English curriculum to focus on whole texts each half term rather than extracts from lots of different texts, in line with latest research suggesting this had better outcomes – used the ‘Reading Spine’ list to select texts from.
- promoting key texts to read at home – these were specially curated lists for each age group which were sent home – these were based on surveys of academics, teachers, children and parents – a sort of “top 30” for each age. Children were encouraged to tick off each one they had read as part of the ‘Scrapbook’ approach to homework.
- a ‘meet the teachers’ evening, where we promoted the role of the parent in reading at home, moving away from a ‘passive’ model to encouraging dialogue. KS1 children were sent a list of e.g. questions to discuss with their parents/carers for their home reading each week.
- new books given out as special prizes half-termly for special achievements over the half term.
- promoting the Cambridgeshire library Service Summer Reading Challenge
- increasing the opportunities for pupils to write for a clearer purpose e.g. to read out their own work to other classes – e.g. creating their own Mr. Men books.