Reading at Sandhurst Primary School
At Sandhurst Primary we develop children’s love of literature through widespread reading for pleasure. We believe it is important to expose children to quality texts in order to engage and inspire them to be life-long readers. Reading feeds children’s imaginations and provides wonder and joy for curious young minds, so we believe it is important to encourage our children to read a diverse range of books by a wide variety of authors. We seek to develop a strong reading culture through planned activities and events which promote reading as a positive experience. Each class has a reading area with a variety of books, added to this we have a wonderful school library, with a rich selection of books as well as smaller reading ‘pop-up corners’ and reading sheds outside.
From nursery, children are exposed to quality texts, engaging and inspiring them to want to read for themselves and to model reading and language structures. We know that language acquisition and vocabulary is crucial to our children, especially in the Early Years, and so a story rich culture is paramount. In year 1 children begin our Daily Supported Reading programme [DSR] – enabling children to read books independently and successfully at their learning level, to an adult, four days per week. Children also benefit from a taught synthetic phonics programme called Read, Write Inc by Ruth Miskin. This begins as soon as children start in Reception and follows through to Year 2.
By the time children reach KS2 they reach a level of reading fluency that enables them to benefit from ‘Destination Reader,’ a new approach to reading aimed at helping children to develop a deeper understanding of what they have read. This approach enables all children to participate in whole class discussions about texts, building key reading skills such as inference and retrieval and providing them with a valuable opportunity to elaborate on their ideas, explaining them in more detail, building on others’ ideas and supporting their viewpoint with textual evidence. Children who find comprehension difficult receive additional support joining regular interventions groups developing their language skills and encouraging them to become active readers.
At Sandhurst we value the role of Parents and carers in their children’s reading journey and reading records are used throughout the school to aid communication between home and school. Through enrichment days such as World Book Day, children enjoy a variety of book-related fun activities. We have close links with the local Library and support events such as the ‘Summer Reading Scheme’. Book fairs and book swaps are held annually and provide an opportunity for children to purchase/share books whilst raising money for class libraries. We have also established our ‘Reading Buddies’ scheme where children in Year 5 and 6, help to support infant children.
Summer Reading Challenge Winners
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