Reading
Reading is a huge part of our curriculum and learning at St Edward’s Catholic First School. We promote high-quality books and texts across all subjects.
Book Talk
In Years 1-4, we teach two Book Talk lessons a week through Jane Considine’s Hooked on Book approach. We begin our Book Talk learning journey with whole class Reading led by the class teacher in Year 1. The children use the reading rainbow to identify key aspects, themes and ideas within the text.
During Year 2, the children will transition to child-led groups of six when they are ready to, similar to Years 3 and 4. They will have copies of the book to read together and verbally answer and discuss the reading rainbow lens and sentence starter for the session. As the children progress, they will begin to identify quotes and evidence from the book to support their answers.
Demonstration Comprehension
In Years 3 and 4, the children have three comprehension Reading lessons based around a text. They will study 3 narrative texts, 3 non-fiction texts and 1 poem each half term. A chapter or section of a chapter has been carefully selected to read together, discuss and use their “reading brains”.
Day 1: The Big Picture
In the first lesson of the week, the children will be introduced to their key text. Their teacher will read it aloud and have a copy of the extract for the children to follow along to. Sometimes they may choral or echo read this text too to understand the flow of writing. Tricky vocabulary and contextual words will be discussed.
They will then move on to writing a short summary of what they have read in a sentence or two and discuss any readers’ questions that they might have now.
Day 2: Reading Like a Detective
The extract will be re-read as a class. Following this, they will create a making meaning mindmap together. This could mean that key ideas about a character, their emotions, the setting are pulled out from the text so that they understand more about what they have read.
After completing this together, they will then explain what their reading brain is thinking now after gathering all of this information.
Day 3: Demonstration Comprehension
The children will be introduced to three questions. The first question will be modelled by the class teacher. They will demonstrate how to plan jotting down points and thoughts on the question, as well as back up their ideas with evidence from the text. They will then show how they have used these plans to form an answer to the question.
As a class, the second question will be planned and written together in the same format. The third question will be answered independently by the children, using everything that they have learnt over the past three lessons.
Patron of Reading
We are delighted that Fiona Barker is our Patron of Reading. Fiona supports our school in helping encourage and develop a reading for pleasure culture.
If you would like to learn more about Fiona, please do check out her website: https://fionabarker.co.uk/
A New Chapter Book Wish List
We are hugely grateful for all of the support we have had to restock our class libraries with new, diverse and high-quality texts over the last year. Thank you to the families who have bought a book for their child’s class library. If you wish to donate a book, please use our A New Chapter book wish list. We update this each time a wish list is complete and add new, exciting reads to our collection. The current wish list has three books for each year group that will be used within the English lessons so that there are extra copies within the classroom for the children to share and follow along together.
https://www.anewchapterbooks.com/shop?Wishlists=St+Edward%E2%80%99s+Catholic+First+School
Reading Ambassadors
These are eight children from Years 3 and 4. Reading Ambassadors work towards promoting reading and reading for enjoyment across the school. They love to read, read books of different genres and authors and like sharing books and stories with others.