Reading

Reading at KINS

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum enabling all children to be fluent, confident, life long readers who understand what they have read.

At KINS, we see reading as something that empowers our children to explore worlds beyond their own world, worlds that are only available to them through books. Our approach to reading is firmly rooted is a carefully designed alongside our programme of systematic, synthetic phonics with Little Wandle Letters and Sounds.

Reading underpins children’s access to the curriculum and it clearly impacts on their achievement. Children who enjoy reading and choose to read benefit not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. To be able to read, children need to be taught an efficient strategy to decode words.

The reading practice sessions take place at least three times a week using books that match the phonics progression of Little Wandle Letters and Sounds and have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

• decoding

• prosody – reading with meaning, stress and intonation

• comprehension – understanding the text

Comprehension skills also need to be taught to enable children to make sense of what they read, build on what they already know and give them a desire to want to read. Reading increases children’s vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech.

We ensure that our children will experience a wide range of texts that promote fluency, understanding and develop regular reading habits. In school, texts are chosen to reflect our rich literary heritage and we place an emphasis on regular reading and reading for pleasure, both in school, and at home . Through a progressive use of language rich texts, children’s ability to work with more complex language is developed. Engaging texts are key to the planning and delivery of Reading and Writing in our school.

Reading opens the door to learning. A child who reads a lot will become a good reader. A good reader will be able to read more challenging material. A child who reads challenging material is a child who will learn. The more a child learns, the more he or she will want to find out.