Compton C.E. Primary School

At Compton C of E Primary we aim for our children to be life-long independent motivated readers, by the time they leave us they are able to:

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding.
•  Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
•  Having acquired a wide vocabulary, which has been both actively and systematically built on during their time at our school.
• Make links between known and new vocabulary and discuss the shades of meaning in similar words.
• Understand the meaning of words they meet in their reading across all subjects.
• Show an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions.
•  Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
• Use discussion in order to learn; being able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.

From yr2 the children build on their secure successful phonic and reading foundations from EYFS and Yr1 phonics.The key skills of word reading and comprehension as set out in the national curriculum are delivered primarily through a guided reading approach which allows us to target children reading at their point of need. This ensures challenge for all in terms of decoding/fluency and comprehension. We individualise/target higher order questioning for pupils, particularly to support our lowest 20%. We ensure children meet texts at their level in reading and being questioned to develop from their starting points and helping to ensure they meet the demands of the national curriculum.

 Children are exposed to a carefully selected range of books and genres of both classic and modern authors. Our children are given opportunities to read aloud to the class, their peer or individually.  Writing at our school has reading at the heart of it, our writing medium term plans have reading to aid the writing as a key part, we use whole class reading in English session to help children immerse themselves to the text type and purpose. Reading happens across the curriculum and there are regular opportunities to read and apply reading skills in topic lessons.

A systematic approach to teaching Phonics (RWI) has resulted in significantly improved school phonics outcomes. Pupils are learning to decode and encode quickly and successfully thereby providing a firm foundation for further learning. From yr2 our children build on their successes from EYFS and yr1 with a secure phonics knowledge to ensure they are fluent readers with a good basis of comprehension by the end of Key Stage 1.  This means children have met the demands of the reading national curriculum and enables them to be ready to take on the demands of the key stage 2 reading curriculum. A tracker based on National Curriculum objectives is used to inform teachers and leaders of the skills and knowledge the pupils have achieved or need to improve further. School improvement leaders closely monitor all pupil’s and hold individual termly meetings with all teachers to assess every individual child’s learning needs and progress.

Our most recent SATs results in 2019 showed that our pupils achieve above average (nationally and local authority) in reading. 80.8% of pupils reached the expected standard and 38.5% of pupils were working at greater depth.