Reading

At Ramsey Spinning Infant School, reading is at the very centre of our curriculum. It is the lighthouse and the driver behind our learning and we celebrate this in all of our subjects. Our bespoke reading spine and curriculum demonstrate our high aspirations for our children and our desire to foster a love of reading for all children.  

Context: Ramsey is a market town situated close to both Peterborough and Huntingdon. It is a growing community with an increasing number of children requiring additional support inside and outside of the classroom as well as requiring pupil premium funding. We are proud to support so many of our families through our joint partnerships and develop long-lasting relationships with them. 

Intent: At Ramsey Spinning Infants, reading is given a high priority, we want all of our children to leave us being confident and capable readers. We are committed to ensuring our children develop a ‘love of reading’ and the necessary reading skills to ensure they reach their full potential. 

We are aware of how important reading is for children, it can be an enjoyable and imaginative time for them, opening doors to all kinds of new worlds. It also allows them to access other areas of the curriculum. Through reading, children have the opportunity to develop culturally, socially and emotionally as well as reaping the benefits academically. 

At Ramsey Spinning Infants, we recognise the importance of developing children’s discrete word reading skills and comprehension, and the need to encourage their love of books and reading through familiar stories, poetry and a variety of high quality fiction and non-fiction texts.

Aims: Our aim is for all children across the school to have access to high-quality, engaging texts, reading lessons and experiences that develop their love of reading both within and outside of the classroom. We want our children to achieve their full potential which is supported by an ambitious and rich diet of reading, celebrating wider opportunities to showcase this and supporting children to develop these skills. We know that demonstrating a true love of reading for pleasure has such a positive impact on their futures and, by putting reading at the heart of our curriculum, we strive to create positive learning experiences to create lifelong learners.

Our approach: At Ramsey Infants School, all children are exposed to a rich and varied diet of texts. Reading is prioritised at our school. Daily phonics and reading sessions support children in learning how to read and how to enjoy various stories.  Children are taught how to explore different texts and to develop finding their own preferences. We have developed a reading spine full of high quality texts that celebrate various text types, diversity and genre. Children enjoy a weekly Reading Bugs session where children move to different adults in school to simply enjoy a book. Pupil voice has reflected (as has children’s smiles in these sessions) that this is a highlight of the week. We also understand the importance of supporting those who may still support with regards to phonics instruction and this is carefully timetabled to provide specific, targeted support following the Unlocking Letters and Sounds scheme used by our partner Infants school. This allows for continuity and consistency as children move from one school to another. 

Reading Spine: Each year group has its own bespoke reading spine which was developed following research. The spines celebrate classic authors, new authors, picture books, non-fiction books and are used in our writing lessons, daily reading and structured story sessions.. We sought advice on which texts to use and carefully mapped these out alongside our curriculum as well as taking into consideration key principles and protected characteristics. Each classroom displays their text selections which are changed each half term. 

Library:  We are very proud to have such an amazing space for the library at Ramsey Infants. All pupils have a weekly timetabled library slot which is used to explore different texts, magazines, a great selection of non-fiction and fiction texts, enjoy listening to audiobooks or to spend time reading independently or with friends. Classes have been supported to ensure the library is kept looking beautiful and our displays are regularly changed which showcase our celebrated author and our school values seen in books. Alongside our main school library, you will see many book-based displays around our school and wherever we can we aim to provide books that link directly with the displays. Every classroom has a dedicated area for their book corners and children regularly enjoy books from these. 

Reading events: We hold many different reading-based events across the school year including celebrating World Book Day and Roald Dahl day, visiting authors, theatre company visits,, book fairs, after school bedtime reading events and our weekly ‘Read for the Weekend’ prize. Each week a lucky child is chosen to take home the class book and a sachet of hot chocolate to enjoy over the weekend. A lovely way to celebrate reading and to end each week with this is such a treat. 

Our Guided Reading lessons: Within our Guided Reading sessions children are taught how to develop their fluency and understanding when reading. With an adult, children have three lessons that focus on decoding, prosody and comprehension. This allows children to improve their reading fluency as well as demonstrate their understanding of what they have read.

Structured story lessons:

We regularly read aloud to, and with the children, to model how to read with expression and how to find enjoyment in reading. We use a mixture of class and paired discussions as well as time for individual thinking and reflection on the texts we are covering. Children are exposed to a variety of question types to develop inference, vocabulary, retrieval, prediction and sequencing skills. We understand the importance of vocabulary development in our children, so every session will contain an element of vocabulary instruction. We want our children to leave our school with a wide understanding of words and their meaning as well as the tools to derive this understanding when encountering new vocabulary. 

Newsletter: We want our parents to be as informed as possible about what we are doing in school and to celebrate with us. We send a reading newsletter home to all parents every half term to summarise what we have been doing in reading over the weeks. These newsletters showcase what we have done in school as well as promote up and coming events.