At Scarcroft, we know that engaging children with reading from the beginning is one of the most important ways we make a difference to our children’s life chances, regardless of their socio-economic background. Therefore, nurturing the ability to read accurately and speedily, with a good understanding, is core to everything that we do. We are committed to ensuring that our children progress successfully through a structured synthetic phonics programme, engage in rigorous and specific comprehension teaching, develop a life-long love of reading by being part of a positive culture of reading for pleasure across our community, and have reading opportunities that help them to understand the world’s diversity and their place within it.
As the phonics section details, Little Wandle Letters and Sounds (Revised) forms the backbone of reading teaching in EYFS and KS1 allowing children to become fluent decoders. Alongside this, comprehension skills are built using ‘Super Six’ books in EYFS and with a wide range of high quality texts curated by our expert reading teachers in KS1.
Moving into KS2, reading fluency continues to be prioritised with both extracts and whole books being explored in whole-class guided reading sessions which prepare our children for the rigours of comprehension and disciplinary reading at KS3 and beyond. These texts include Scarcroft’s Canon of Reading which ensures that children access a variety of texts so they can build cultural capital and enjoy celebrating the diverse world we live in today.
Careful formal and teacher assessment means that staff are attuned to those pupils requiring support to remain at age-related expectations with their reading. This includes individual reading diaries in KS1 and whole-class records in KS2. We use a variety of solutions to plug children’s reading gaps including, teacher and teaching assistant intervention groups, Right to Read and other community volunteers and Year 6 Reading Buddies.
Reading for Pleasure is celebrated daily. Classroom reading areas are kept appealing, tidy and well stocked with a wide variety of reading material and enthusiastic reading is modelled by teachers. Our library is a dedicated space within the school with Y6 monitors who help keep it tidy. We often connect with authors through virtual events. On the playground, our newly-stocked Reading Sheds allow the enjoyment to continue at break and lunch as well.
As a whole-school, we celebrate National Poetry Day and World Book Day (where every child goes to the book fair and every child comes home with a brand new book) annually as well as having a KS2 Shakespeare Week every year. York Explore Library also visits every summer to promote their Summer Reading Challenge and children who take part are always celebrated when they return to school in September.
