English - Reading
Welcome to our Reading Curriculum
At Cuddington Croft, we aim to inspire and foster a love of reading amongst our pupils. Reading is fundamental to the development of children and the foundation for their learning throughout their time at school. We develop this love through exposing children to a range of high quality texts in our English and Guided Reading lessons; our school and class libraries and a range of theme days and weeks such as Story-Telling Week, where teachers choose engaging and high quality texts for children to build on their oracy and story telling skills, World Book Day, where purposeful activities are planned to celebrate and share children’s favourite books/characters, Usbourne sponsored R&R Week and the Scholastic Book Fair, which promote and encourage a love of reading through rewards to buy new books of their choice, author visits to inspire children, reading buddies and paired reading where each class pairs up with a class of a different key stage to share books of their choice.
Our Reading Intent
Alongside phonics lessons and phonics interventions, children in KS1 and KS2 take part in CUSP reading lessons. Through the CUSP Reading curriculum, children will be exposed to an extensive range of diverse, high quality, fiction and non-fiction texts which cover a range of relevant social issues, big ethical questions and moral dilemmas. The depth and breadth of the literary study intends to empower both the children and the teachers while providing joyful reading experiences. Children will read not just with fluency and understanding but with enjoyment and confidence as the evidence-based (Rosenshine, Shanahan & Rasinski, Law et al, Lemov, Didau, Pankin and Mayer), structured learning sequence explicitly teaches the core reading strategies. Children’s reading attainment will be assessed to identify and close gaps quickly and effectively .Through the quality of texts and teacher modelling children will be supported in developing their conceptual fluency, prosody and language across the curriculum to prepare them for future demands and develop the necessary cultural capital.
Implementation - how do we plan and teach Reading?
- In Years 1-6, children take part in scaffolded CUSP lessons where they are taught explicit vocabulary instruction, deliberate fluency instruction and explicit teaching of comprehension strategies. Lessons focus on the key reading skills: summarising, retrieval, inferencing and predicting. Regularly trained teachers follow the ‘I do, we do, you do’ teaching model based on Rosenshine’s teaching principles in order to guide and support all children effectively. All lessons are focused on rich, diverse, good quality core texts combined with relevant fiction and non-fiction extracts. Throughout each two week block learning journey, children pull together and make links between the core texts, extracts and what they already know.
- In EYFS, Year 1, Year 2 and KS2 (where appropriate) decoding, blending and comprehension skills are taught through Read Write Inc. Through this curriculum, children are provided with materials which are closely matched to their phonic knowledge.
- Within reading lessons and 1:1 reading, struggling readers are identified and bespoke interventions are put in place.
- Across the school, we hold a range of themed days/weeks and activities every year: Storytelling Week, where teachers choose engaging and high quality texts for children to build on their oracy and story telling skills; World Book Day, where purposeful activities are planned to celebrate and share children’s favourite books/characters; Usbourne sponsored R&R Week and the Scholastic Book Fair, which promote and encourage a love of reading through rewards to buy new books of their choice; author visits to inspire children and paired reading where each class pairs up with a class of a different key stage to share books of their choice.
- Children are read to each day by their class teacher. This could be a book that the teacher recommends to the class, the CUSP text or a recommendation from the class.
- High quality texts are provided in each classroom’s reading area as well as in the library. Each class visits the library once a week.
- The new library system allows children to take a greater ownership of the running of the school library, further promoting a love of reading.
- The CUSP reading spine on the website allows for both parents and children to be aware of the high quality texts that are covered in each year group and provides suggestions for age appropriate books to read at home should they wish.
Impact - what does progress look like?
At Cuddington, our children will have developed conceptual fluency and comprehension skills which they can use and apply across a range of subjects, lessons and in the wider world as they continue their educational journey. Through exposure to the diverse literature spine, children become inclusive, compassionate and aspirational citizens in the wider community. Learning walks show children having high quality discussions about vocabulary and texts while practicing fluency and prosody through a variety of reading strategies such as echo reading, paired reading and performance reading. Children feedback demonstrates their passion, engagement and love for the reading books they are exposed to. Children can also articulate what they have read and how this can have an impact on their writing. Attainment is measured by children’s results in their phonics screening test, teacher assessments and by our PIXL assessments.
Phonics and Reading work collaboratively as one subject. Please see more information on our phonics curriculum which is specific to our Read, Write, Inc programme.
When our children leave Cuddington Croft, a good learner in Reading will...
Have a love for reading.
Be exposed to and enjoy reading a range of texts.
Read with fluency and prosody
Be able to read and discuss an increasingly wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books or textbooks.
Make comparisons within and across books.
Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, considering the impact on the reader.
Be able to write for a range of audiences and purposes using accurate grammatical features and a wide range of ambitious and effective vocabulary which draws on what they have read as models.
Love for Reading
As we continue to promote 'Love for Reading,' we have 100 books to be read for Reception, Years 1 & 2, Years 3 & 4 and Years 5 & 6. Take a look below. How many of these books have you read already?
100 books to read for Early Years
100 books to read for Years 1 & 2
100 books to read for Years 3 & 4
