Welcome to reading at Newham Bridge Primary School
“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”
– Dr. Seuss
At Newham Bridge, we believe reading is the key to unlocking a world of learning and opportunity. From Nursery to Y6, reading underpins our curriculum. Through access to high-quality stories and texts, children are able to expand their vocabulary, develop essential language skills and gain confidence as learners. Reading also sparks imagination, creativity and allows children to explore new ideas, places and experiences. Our aim is for every child to become confident, fluent readers, who not only understand what they read, but also develop a love of reading.
We place a great importance on creating strong foundations. In our early years and KS1, children are taught to read through a systematic and rigorous approach to phonics. These early foundations enable children to decode accurately, build fluency and develop confidence as readers. As children progress through the school, these skills are strengthened and extended so that reading becomes increasingly automatic and purposeful.
Our approach
In early years, stories and books are central to children’s learning. In reception, talk through stories is used and a wide range of texts are shared throughout the year.
This is built upon in KS1. Each week, all children from Y2 – Y6 access whole class guided reading lessons. Our first lesson is designed to immerse the children in a text and become familiar with the story, characters and language and their second lesson is delving deeper into the written text and developing a range of skills to support their reading journey.
Book club:
Each year group from reception to Y6 also have a weekly ‘Book club’. This is a time to enjoy stories, poems, scripts, any type of genre with their class. In this time, children have the opportunity to revisit some of their loved books from previous years or discover something new. During these lessons, the focus is on developing a passion for reading.
Reading Aloud
Reading aloud is a frequent and regular part of each school day across the whole school. Reading aloud slows written language down and enables children to hear and take in tunes and patterns. Teachers model expert fluent reading. It enables children to experience and enjoy stories that they might not otherwise meet giving the children exposure to different places, times and cultures. It also improves the children’s language skills and vocabulary.
All class teachers select a high- quality text to read aloud to their class. Our range of class reads are below.
Reading projects:
Young readers project
This year, we’re very fortunate to be part of the National Literacy Trust’s ‘Young Readers Project’. Our Y2 and Y3 children will be taking part in exciting events throughout the year and during each one will get to delve into a range of books. At the end of the year, each child will have 3 books to take home and enjoy.
Our Little Big Book Club
We’re also excited to announce our Newham Bridge, Little, Big Book Club this year. Mrs Rooney, with support from the National Literacy Trust, will be working with parents and carers and a small group of Y4 children to develop a love of reading. They’ll be taking part in lots of lovely activities over the coming months and they’ve already chosen from a huge library of books, their very own to take away and enjoy
Home school books:
Each child is given books to read at home. Children are encouraged to read daily at home and reading records are used to be monitored by the class teacher.
In Reception and Y1 books are phonetically decodable at the child’s level. Children also choose a story book for pleasure for parents to read to them. Children who are unable to decode may be given wordless books to promote their story telling skills and language, alongside word cards and key words.
In Year 2, children transition from phonetically decodable books to the Accelerated Reader (AR) programme when ready.
We organise our AR level books into themes, so that children are able to select books that are of particular interest to them. Organising books in this way does not limit pupils and restrict them to only choosing unfamiliar books from a narrow level. Our children will now read within their wide AR reading range, books that will interest and inspire them to read widely and often. (Reading Framework 2023)
In Y2 – Y6 the children take home a book within their wide reading range, choosing from a vast selection of genres, themes and authors independently
How to support at home:
All of our children will bring a book home each night. This could be a sharing book for our younger children. This is a book to read together. Look at the pictures, ask about the characters and have a chat about what is happening and what they like about the story. Some children will bring home their accelerated reader book. This book, they should be reading independently however reading aloud to an adult is a great way to develop their understanding of different texts. Below are some ideas to help develop the reading skills we work on in school.
Supporting documents:
