Information on the approach to Reading at Culverhill School.

Culverhill recognises that reading is the key to learning and we in the process of developing a high quality reading curriculum to ensure most of our pupils are able to read to the best of their ability by the time they leave us in Year 11.

Programmes used:

All our staff recognise that pupils come from backgrounds where they have varied experiences. A range of approaches to reading are used to develop phonic knowledge, word recognition, and the use of contextual clues to enable pupils to gain confidence to independently read material of increasing complexity.

We are in the process of aligning our whole school phonics approach for our Inspire pupils. Pupils will be following Letters and Sounds phonics programme as they progress through the school. Pupils will have a phonics assessment 3 x a year. In Key Stage 2 pupils will have daily phonics sessions delivered in small groups according to ability. For pupils at the pre phonics stage we use a personalised multi-sensory approach using input from the OT or speech and language team as required,

Most pupils in Key Stage 2 currently use Oxford Reading Tree as our Reading Scheme. This is currently under review.

Some pupils will use Dandelion Launchers or Readers if more support is needed to develop their word building skills.

Pupils will have regular 1:1 reading sessions throughout the week with the class team.

From Year 7 onwards, our Inspire pupils follow the Rapid Reading programme to continue to develop their phonic and reading comprehension skills as they move through the school. Pupils will continue with Rapid Reading through to Year 11.

Phonics will continued to be taught to pupils across Key Stage 3. Some pupils may need continued support with phonics in Key Stage 4 but other strategies maybe used such was picture or contextual clues to further develop their functional literacy skills such as reading instructions for example.

At KS4 pupils follow the AQA Step Up to English Entry Level qualification. Pupils can achieve Entry Level 1, 2 or 3 qualification. This is a Unit based qualification and uses key texts linked to most topics. This course is taught over 2 years and enables our Inspire and Thrive children to achieve this.

We recognise that some pupils may need further intervention with their reading and this could be carried out by a class TA within lesson time, or through booster sessions.

Our approach to reading:

Culverhill is dedicated to encouraging a love of reading across the school. Our English curriculum from Class 1 to Year 9 is topic based with a book at the centre of each topic. This could be fiction or non -fiction texts linked to that topic throughout that term. We regularly read stories to our classes and pupils are encouraged to familiarise themselves with the class read. This helps model expression and vocabulary development and further support information retrieval skills. Daily reading time is included in the timetable to further support reading for all pupils.

We believe that reading comprehension is equally important so that pupils understand and enjoy what they read or have listened to. We have introduced VIPERS as a questioning tool (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Sequence) to support and encourage our pupils make meaning from what they read or listened to. VIPERS is used across the curriculum to embed comprehension across all subject areas.

All classes have access to a wide range of reading books for pupils to enjoy which are regularly updated. We have recently purchased a digital newspaper First News which is available on all our IPads for pupils to explore and further develop their knowledge of the world around them.