At Guillemont, through reading and listening to a range of rich, diverse texts, children develop in a range of ways: culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Children are able to read easily, fluently and with good understanding in order to become confident communicators, who are ready to participate fully in society and their next phase of learning. We value reading so highly that children leave with a habit of ‘reading for pleasure’ and will be self-motivated to acquire new knowledge that builds on what they already know.
Teaching of Reading is based upon the National Curriculum and the new Reading Framework 2023 and teachers ensure that this is enhanced to ensure children have the best possible outcomes. Guided Reading lessons take place every day for 40 minutes and children are read to during lessons and story time. The English Curriculum leader keeps up-to-date with developments in the subject by regularly attending the HIAS run district Core Provision meetings as well as the annual English conference; information from these sessions is passed onto staff through workshops. HIAS advisers are invited into school on INSET days to provide training for teachers and LSAs when a need arises.
Reading is taught through whole class sessions, we teach our children key reading skills referencing the content domains from the KS2 English Reading Test Framework and apply these to high quality texts that are chosen for progression across the year groups. Comprehension and the reading skills aren’t taught explicitly, but are embedded in the lessons, so that children build on key skills. Every week, children hear adults reading, and spend time on fluency activities based on their quality text. Scaffolding is provided to remove barriers to reading, and challenges are presented to all children to extend their thinking.
Children are encouraged to read widely from the library, selecting from a range of authors and genres, and all children are read with regularly to ensure they also have a book on the correct reading band to reflect their age, stage, ability and phonics sounds focus. Our library has been recently refurbished, and we have a librarian on staff to manage and look after the stock of books and ensure they are regularly updated. We subscribe to School Library Service who regularly audit our book stock (in the library and in classes) to ensure books are new, relevant and enticing, and provide extra services such as class e-books and can attend workshops for staff training . Story time is timetabled twice a week to ensure that a love of reading is shared. All readers have access to a reading scheme which is designed for KS2 progression, but all children are assessed when they come to Guillemont and our SSP Read, Write, Inc. (Freshstart for the upper school) is taught to support those children who have fallen behind. Reading regularly at home is encouraged through a whole school incentive, BoomRead is used as an online record for children, parents and teachers can monitor reading at home and at school. Bug Club is available to all children at school and at home and provides an alternative online format.
Reading for pleasure is embedded as a culture throughout the school, adults model good reading practice. Reading for pleasure is encouraged to be intrinsically incentivised – as children build on their reading skills and reading miles, so they will recognise their achievements and develop a love for reading. Other incentives throughout the school include celebrating World Book Day, an Author Visit, National Poetry Day, with a visit from a poet, Reading Cafes, shared reading, sponsored reading opportunities to win prizes and raise money to spend on books, a Class Reading Cup in assemblies and prizes for activity on BoomRead. Each class has a quiet library session timetabled to ensure each class gets regular exclusive time in the library. We are also creating Reading Boxes to take outside, and if children do not have books at home we provide them through SLS and a charity run by staff in the school. We endeavour to instil a love of poetry across the school: a ‘Poem of the Week’ is distributed to read and display with ideas and activities to explore further.
Our school has a clear focus on the development of speech and language. We have implemented tiered vocabulary development throughout the curriculum and use working walls, visual prompts (WIDGET) and pre teach vocabulary. This helps children to make links and develop their speaking and listening as well as their reading. Barriers to learning are addressed in Guided Reading lessons and children are given scaffolds as appropriate to ensure they can access the curriculum.
At Guillemont Junior School we can judge the success of our writing curriculum in the following ways:
Our rich curriculum must ensure that our pupils are academically prepared for life beyond our school and the wider world.
We will be holding morning tours for prospective parents on Monnday 28th September and Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd October 7th October (9am – 12pm).
