Reading 2024 - 2025

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go.” – Dr Seuss

At Boundary Primary School we aim to develop reading skills with our pupils in order to improve their life chances, provide them with life skills and to promote reading for pleasure and enjoyment. We believe that reading can open doors for our pupils and can help them to gain experiences, improve language and vocabulary skills and stimulate their imaginations. We aim to create confident readers who have good independent learning skills and develop a range of interests through reading. Reading for pleasure contributes to educational success, our journey to success focuses on developing a life-long love of reading and equipping our pupils for the next stage on their journey.

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Guided Reading

Guided reading is used throughout the school as a key teaching strategy. We use a whole class approach that follows a set of lessons throughout the week. The children are introduced to a text and are then taught how to read the text accurately, with tone and intonaiton. This is to focus on their prosody and projecting their voice. The children explore the text several times to maximise understanding and to practise reading out loud. The children are then introduced to questions to answer and these are also explored so that the children can be successful in answering comprehension questions. This model is followed in both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

A variety of reading scheme materials are used for both guided reading and independent sessions (Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Collins Big Cat etc). As the children progress in their reading, the guided reading sessions are supplemented by a broader range of non-fiction reading materials and with carefully chosen high quality novels/extracts and poetry. These more challenging texts help our children to experience a range of genres and writing styles. They provide different sentence structures, vocabulary, layouts and contexts and help our children to experience a wealth of texts and begin to form opinions and preferences in literature.

Individual Reading

Texts are chosen from the school’s various reading schemes and are at the instructional level for each child. The school actively promotes the support of parents in this process by hearing their child at least three times a week and recording this in the home-school record.

With our brand new home reading books we hope that all children will grow to develop a true love of reading!

Shared Reading

In these sessions, teachers demonstrate how to read a wide variety of different texts and show that reading is a pleasurable and informative experience. Shared reading gives access to challenging texts for all pupils and provides a secure environment for learning to read.

Independent Reading tasks

Teachers set reading tasks for pupils that require them to read without teacher support. Some of these tasks might require a written response. These comprehension activities check for understanding of texts and prepare children for future reading tests.

Whole Class Text

Each class will also have a book that they are studying, chosen from the year group texts. The teacher will model reading this aloud to the class while allowing time for questioning and discussions. These carefully selected books ensure that all our children are exposed to a wide range of quality literature and that they develop an awareness of famous authors and different writing styles.

In order to expose the children at Boundary to a wide range of authors and challenging vocabulary, each year group studies a specific author and books set around a particular theme. The books chosen are all age-related and provide children with the opportunity to make links between books by the same author and similarities between the themed books.

Useful Links

Encouraging Children to Read

Encouraging Older Children to Read

Oxford Reading 7 – 9 Year Olds

Tips for reluctant readers

Oxford Reading 9 – 11 Year Olds

Celebrating Reading at Boundary At Boundary we value reading and aim for all our children to become enthusiastic, lifelong readers. As well as the daily teaching of reading we have many other reading activities that run throughout the year:
Our library has now complete and fully stocked with a range of new and exciting books. Here, children are exposed to a wide variety of texts and are free to choose a book that interests them. These books are kept in school for the children to read during independent reading sessions.	Year 3 teachers held a reading club, where parents were invited along each week to sit and read with their children. It also allowed our Year 3 children to be exposed to a range of new and exciting texts.
We have taken part in a sponsored read, organised by Mrs. G at Usborne books. The children were encouraged to read every night for a week and have friends and family sponsor them. Over the course of the week we were able to raise £450 to spend on books. On top of this, Usborne books gave us a further £260. With £710 to spend on books for the school we were able to purchase books for all year groups, with the majority of the money being spent on phonics books for EYFS/Year 1. Every year we celebrate Word Book Day by dressing up as our favourite character. This year the theme was ‘Read, Grow, Inspire’. We shared lots of ways we could read to others and share our favourite books. This year we welcome Mr. Vincent and Bailey the dog, who are working with children across the school. During 'Bailey's Book Club' sessions, different children will take it in turns to read to Bailey as well as enjoying stories shared by Mr Vincent to the whole class. Year 3 took part in ‘Take 10’. This was provided by the National Literacy Trust and Susie Dent talked about her latest book and her love for words! The children were then guided into taking 10 to read their books.	Local author Dan Worsley regularly visits Boundary to lead whole school assemblies. He spends time talking to the children about what it is like to be an author and shares his stories with the children. We have also had visits from several other authors and poets over the year, including local poet Nathan Parker, Shane Hegarty and James Harris. In Year 5, children work closley with the 'Royal Shakespeare Company' to learn and perform one of Shakespeare's plays. Certain children are chosen to then perform part of the play with other school's at Blackpool's Grand Theatre.

How can you help at home?

All our children from Reception through to Year 6 will be provided with a home reading book. This will be chosen from our reading scheme. The children progress through the levels, developing fluency and confidence and then move on to free choice reading books (usually Years 5 & 6.) We would expect most children to be changing their book at least once a week but reading books can of course be changed more regularly for our avid readers.

Top Tips

Try to read each day
Choose a quiet time and a quiet place
Please communicate with school and record any comments or concerns in your child’s reading log.
Try to make it fun by playing games or setting mini challenges
Talk lots about the book and check that your child understands the meaning of any new words.
Re-read familiar books for fluency, confidence and pleasure

What to do if your child is struggling with their reading:

Sound out the word using phonics knowledge (parent workshops are provided to help with this in Foundation stage and Key Stage 1)
Help reinforce tricky words which cannot be sounded out and just need to be read on sight Eg what, said, me
Read around the word or read on to the end of the sentence and then return to the word. Can you make sense of it now?
Look for picture clues to help you make a sensible guess.
Please arrange to meet with your child’s teacher to discuss your concerns.

For more information relating to our Reading into Writing journey, please click here

Booklist Years 1 - 6 Intent, Implementation, Impact in Full.pdf Early Reading Statement 2022.pdf Whole School Reading Progression.pdf