Intent

At Shakespeare we believe high-quality reading experiences are at the heart of every subject and how the school moves children from learning to read to reading to learn! When children are taught the necessary skills and crack the ‘Reading Code’ as soon as possible, they are able to access the full curriculum.

Language Unlocks Learning

As a school, we aim to harness a love of reading that inspires and engages. We aim to develop imaginations therefore opening up a treasure house of wonder, joy and knowledge whilst inspiring curious minds.  We know that in a mono-cultural school such as ours, we must ensure that our choice of reading material reflects the multi-cultural and diverse society that exists in Britain today.

Through the use of a wide range of texts, we immerse children in vocabulary-rich learning environments that teach children the skills necessary to actively participate in book talk, enabling them to develop literacy, a love of reading, creative writing and excellent communication skills. We know this is vital for learning and in the future.

Our aims in reading are to ensure our Shakespeare children:

• Become confident and fluent readers who read with accuracy, automaticity and understanding.
• Enjoy and develop positive attitudes towards reading and appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage;
• Develop a range of strategies to support their reading e.g. phonetic, graphic, syntactic and contextual.
• Are able to self- correct and make sense of what they are reading.
• Understand the key reading skills; retrieval, prediction, inference, vocabulary, sequencing and summarising.
• Acquire a wide range of vocabulary and are able to identify, discuss and select the authors choice of vocabulary, can summarise and are able to make detailed comparisons in reading.
• Become competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others, participating in debate and performing.
• Actively take part in discussion and questioning in order to elaborate, clarify and develop their understanding.
• Are exposed to a broad and rich range of fiction and non-fiction texts and can confidently apply the essential reading skills to answer and ask their own questions based on what they have read.

Implementation

At Shakespeare, the teaching of reading focuses upon two dimensions: word reading and language comprehension. Our reading vision reflects comprehensive research, which includes the work of the EEF findings; this includes evidence on the impact of the ‘Reading Comprehension House’. The Reading Comprehension House model supports our vision and illustrates that word reading and language comprehension are underpinned by a number of other building blocks of reading.

Based upon these findings, we have carefully designed a reading curriculum that values and is shaped upon the importance of:

• exposing our children to a wide range of vocabulary.
• provide opportunities to listen and understand.
• teach key strategic reading strategies, enabling our pupils to become fluent, confident and accurate readers.

Our children are taught to read using a wide range of reading resources, topic-specific and age-appropriate texts. Furthermore, explicit links are made with our school’s writing approach to ensure reading is meaningful and purposeful resulting in better outcomes in both reading and writing.

“We know that readers become writers and writers become readers.”

It was fantastic to have Dan Worsley back to visit us this year!

The children were immersed in his storytelling assembly and inspired by his journey as an author. He reminded us about the importance of resilience and left a fabulous message with us to remember -  'Anything is Possible!'

Throughout the day, Year 3 and Year 4 took part in Dan's creative writing workshop. They picked apart Dan's modelled text, dicussed ambitious vocabulary choices and explored the author's choices. From this, they loved creating their own mythical sea creatures, sharing their own ideas, developing vocabulary and using the Writer's Toolkit to create suspense and tension. Some children even got to wear his famous storytelling waistcoat whilst reading aloud and sharing their ideas!

We had lots of excited children who couldn't wait to purchase a signed copy of Dan's 'Impossible Tales' and 'Eric Appleby' series at lunchtime. 

What a fabulous day it was! 

We can't wait to have Dan back at Shakespeare in September! 

https://danworsley.com/

The children loved dressing up! During the day, they shared their favourite stories and made their own reading recommendations. Some classes chose to create reading for Pleasure videos. Keep a look out for these!The Shakespeare Book Swap was a huge hit and everyone loved taking home a new book to share.