The Green Hammerton Reading Offer

At Green Hammerton Primary School, we place high priority in children learning to read.  This starts with our very youngest children in learning of phonics through to our oldest children who have become fluency readers, able to read, understand and discuss a range of challenging texts, appropriate for their age. 

We know that children who develop regular habits of reading for enjoyment generally achieve higher, not just in reading but in a range of areas beyond academic achievement.  They develop greater general knowledge, have a better understanding of other cultures and have a greater insight into human nature.  In short, books and reading are a ticket to opening up the world a little more for each child. 

The start of the journey: Phonics and Early Reading

We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics scheme.  The approach of this scheme is to use whole year group teaching that moves all children through the scheme at the same pace throughout their time in Reception and Year 1. 

Where children are finding it difficult to keep pace with scheme or need some extra consolidation of learning to prevent gaps developing we use keep up sessions that focus on key skills and specific learning from their recent phonics lessons. 

Should a gap develop between a child’s knowledge and application of phonics, and the rest of the cohort, we use the Catch-up sessions to close these gaps as soon as possible.  

For more information about our phonics scheme and how we apply it in school, please see https://www.greenhammertonprimary.co.uk/phonics-and-early-reading-at-green-hammerton/

Our phonics progression documents can be found at https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Programme-Overview_Reception-and-Year-1-1.pdf

Children in Reception and Year 1 also have reading sessions with books that are specifically selected to match their progress in phonics.  These sessions take place 3 times per week as a minimum, with extra sessions for groups and individuals where necessary.  The books the children read are then taken home by the children at the end of each week for further practise of application of graphemes learned in school and reading of ‘trick words’. 

In Year 2, our pupils have a daily reading session.  This operates as a whole year group session with extra support provided for pupils both within the session and outside of the session where necessary.  As the majority of Year 2 pupils have passed the Year 1 phonics screening check, there is a focus on them developing and applying their reading fluency across a wider range of texts, as well as developing heir reading comprehension skills. 

By the time children reach KS2, they will participate in whole class reading sessions which develop the range of reading skills linked to the reading domains of the national curriculum.  There is a focus on reading stamina with children enjoying a range of texts and genres, often linking to their learning in subjects across the curriculum.   During their time in KS2, children increasingly develop their ability to respond in more detail and in greater depth to the texts that they read. 

Whole class story time

Every class in the school has at least one session per day when they are able to listen to and enjoy a story.  These have been selected to allow children to experience different genres as well as encounter cultural, social and moral issues that may be presented in stories. 

One-to-one reading with Teaching Assistants

Provision is made for children who need to accelerate their progress or who have fewer opportunities to read at home. These pupils receive daily 1:1 reading sessions to boost their fluency in addition to phonics and reading sessions. 

Reading helpers

In our school, we have a reading volunteers from our school community who work with individual children to provide them with further opportunities to practice their reading.  These adults work with the same children each week and further develop their reading skills and love of reading. 

Book swap

Our reading ambassadors run the school book swap each week.  This service operates by children and families donating books that they have finished using.  Children can select a books and are often keen to share and read these books during the lunch sessions. 

Class libraries

Green Hammerton Primary offers a wide range of quality classic and contemporary texts from different genres in each class library.  These books are selected to provide a range of reading materials for the children.  In EYFS and KS1, these books are chosen in addition to the reading scheme books and can be shared with an adult at home or school.  In KS2, the class libraries incorporate the reading scheme books but also provide children the opportunity to select from a wider range of books, reflective of their attainment in reading.  By the time children reach or Year 5 and 6 class, there is a greater choice of reading materials but with books still selected to cover a range of genres, authors and cultural topics. 

School Library

We do not yet have a whole school library but this is a project for the 2023-24 year and beyond.  We aim to convert our old ICT suite into school library.  We feel that this is particularly important as there is no library in the village and children have to travel several miles to the nearest public library in Boroughbridge to access this service.

Reading Rewards

As a way of promoting regular reading for all pupils, each class runs a regard system where children ‘buy’ themselves a ticket for the end of half term prize draw by finishing a book or reading a set number of times across each week.  We find that this system is effective and engaging for all children in promoting regular reading

Reading Pods

In 2023-24, we are looking to develop more opportunities for children to engage with reading outside of the classroom.  One of the strategies we’re using is to develop a ‘reading pod’ on the school field where children can spend some quiet time enjoying a book alone or with a friend. 

Early Reading Parent Workshops

To help the parents of our youngest children fully understand how we teach phonics and early reading and how they can best support their children in learning to read, we will hold Early Reading and Phonics workshops in the 2023-24 year.  These will focus on helping parents in key areas such as how to pronounce each phoneme, how to segment and blend, and later in the year, understanding what is entailed in the Phonics Screening Check and how they can support their children in preparation for this. 

Book Week & World Book Day

At Green Hammerton, we celebrate books, authors and reading through events such as Book Week and World book day.  We have moves away from children dressing up as characters as we felt that this often involved unnecessary expense for parents and carers and generally run competitions such as extreme reading challenges and Book-in-a-box competitions that get the children engaging with their favourite books,