Reading
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
At Holmesdale Community Infant School, we believe that reading is key to unlock children’s path to learning, ensuring they are able to access the world around them. We aim to foster a love of reading that follows them to junior school and way beyond.
Throughout the school we use the library at least once a week to encourage and develop a love of reading for pleasure. Each child is able to choose a book to take home from the library to share with their family. Children are to be taught how to use the school library and how to replace the book they borrowed the week before. In our home learning letters each week, teachers will signpost one or more reading skills (linked to current/previous reading planning) which the children can focus on as they read their library book.
Reading Corners
Every class has a reading corner which is attractive, inviting and fosters a love of reading. It has a wide variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, rhymes and magazines. Each class is taught whole class reading once a week in Nursery, twice a week in Reception and daily in Key Stage 1. We use the ‘Pawsome Gang’ to help us to support comprehension and the skills needed to answer questions about what they have read, for example, ‘Prediction Pip’ and ‘Inference Iggy’.
Home Reading
To support children’s reading, we sending home two reading books to encourage children to build their fluency in reading. We also read one to one with each child at least once a week within school and will give children a challenge to work on within their reading to help them to progress.
Story times
The daily time for stories or poems is a priority and high-quality (traditional, modern and non-fiction) stories/rhymes/poems are read aloud to children. Stories/rhymes/poems are re-read, discussed in detail and dramatised to build familiarity and understanding. Vocabulary is explored in wider contexts. Each year group has a list of core books and poems, which are part of Holmesdale’s Reading Spine. This is based upon Pie Corbett’s Reading Spine but has been developed alongside the staff and children so that it is personal to our school’s context. It is reviewed and amended on an annual basis. These core texts are readily available to the children to re-read within their class book corners to develop fluency and a love of reading.