Abbey Primary Community School

Family read: At Abbey Primary Community School ‘family reading’ is encouraged. On a weekly basis chatter matters takes place in KS1, which has dedicated sessions that focus on reading and sharing books with a family member. Each term our children are set reading challenges where they are asked to log down each time they are reading together with a member of their family. The family that reads the most books during the school holiday will receive the family reading award.

Reading in the playground: A range of books are taken into the playground for our children to access. On hot summer days the children can sit under the shade of the trees enjoying a good book.

Phonics: For our children who are starting out on their reading journey, we focus on getting them to recognise letters and sounds and high frequency words. As their understanding of how letters, sounds and words becomes more competent, our focus changes to comprehension and the understanding of what is being read.

Class novels and reading for pleasure: Class novels are also used to engage children in reading and where possible these are linked to our curriculum topics. Shorter stories are used in both Key Stage 1 and Foundation Stage to hook our young readers. In school we have books to suit all readers including an extensive range of high interest, low level texts. These allow all of our children to access reading material at a level which is suitable for them.

Reading champions: Each week our teachers will choose a ‘Reading Champion’ which will be awarded for a variety of different reasons e.g. the most books read, most progress made etc. A certificate and coloured wristband is then presented to the child in Friday Awards Assembly.

Extreme reading: Over the summer the children were invited to take part in a photo competition, for children and staff, to be captured reading in the most obscure and entertaining place that they can think of.

Recommended reading lists: On this page are links to our book list to help you choose appropriate books for your children to read at home.

Guided Reading – It is an entitlement that all children at Abbey Primary School receive an adult led guided reading session in their class once a week. During guided reading classroom practitioner’s focus on targeted groups of children to extend their reading skills through carefully planned reading tasks that are linked to their age and reading stage.

Book Study – A book study is when teachers read a text to their pupils. This is usually pitched at a higher level than the individuals in the class currently read at. This is to promote more exciting, challenging texts to pupils and to develop their skills of inference and deduction. As a class, the children explore a comprehension task/type of question and then in a follow up activity revisit the task either independently or with adult support.

At Abbey Primary Community School we believe that reading is one of the most important skills our children need access the curriculum whilst also being a vital life skill. We know that confident readers can access a wide range of life experiences and enjoy a breadth of genres. Reading allows individuals to acquire knowledge, find out what’s going on, achieve and enjoy themselves! It is important that we help our children to become competent in the skill of reading, understanding what they have read and also empowering them to love and appreciate reading for life.

To enable this to happen, we aim to keep reading fresh and interesting for our children by using a range of teaching strategies and initiatives through our everyday practice which creates an ethos that positively promotes reading.