At Pitmaston Primary School we aspire for every child to leave school as a fluent, confident reader with a thirst for and true love of reading. Pupils are able to talk about books they have enjoyed or are currently reading and why they would recommend them to others.
From the Early Years, there is a deliberate emphasis and drive to ensure that systematic, synthetic phonics is taught daily enabling children to learn the alphabetic code and increase their accuracy of reading through age appropriate texts that excite and engage them. In Year 2 upwards reading is taught daily focusing on the reading skills; vocabulary, comprehension, phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency. Pupils are taught how to infer, predict, clarify, question and summarise their understanding of texts as well as how to understand how an author has used language for effect.
Teachers and pupils share their passion for reading through daily story time, reading rewards, reading with the school ‘Pets As Therapy’ dog, parent reading sessions, visits from poets and authors, as well as regular visits to the school and city library. The first thing children do every day, is ensure the book they have chosen to read is on their desk – not a minute of possible reading time is wasted!
Regular professional development plays a key role in ensuring adults know how best to consistently support reading across the school and the advice of ‘reading experts’ is readily available. Pupils understand that they use their phonics knowledge as the first tool when tackling new words in reading but also understand that automatic recognition of whole words is the ultimate goal. Following regular assessments, additional targeted support is provided for certain pupils so they are able to ‘keep up’. By the end of Key Stage One, our children will have developed the resilience to already be successful, fluent decoders. Pupils enjoy and are exposed to a variety of texts through the Pitmaston Curriculum through the school reading spine, Pitmaston’s Virtual Library and the ‘Pitmaston Promise.’
