Our Vision:

Our vision at the Leys is for children to become readers for life, who want to read for both pleasure and to further their knowledge.

Aim:

We aim to provide expertise in the teaching of phonics and reading so that children are able to read fluently as quickly as possible in their school career. This will ensure all children read with confidence and accuracy. Once children are fluent they will develop a love of reading to ensure their vocabulary and comprehension skills can be maximised. Our curriculum ensures that stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction texts are carefully chosen to reflect the children’s prior experiences. Children will become familiar with and enjoy listening to a wide range of high quality texts.

Delivery:

The ambitious early reading curriculum at The Leys exceeds the National Curriculum expectations. The school has clear expectation of children’s early reading skills through the delivery of The Leys Letters systemic synthetic phonics scheme. This is taught from the second week of Reception, to ensure that children who are at risk of falling behind are identified by their third week in school. Benchmarks are clear through rigorous, in the moment assessments alongside half termly phonics assessments to ensure that all children keep up rather than catch up. If children are falling behind they are given targeted support immediately, showing fidelity to The Leys Letters intervention programme. Teachers give children practice in reading and re-reading books which match the Grapheme Phoneme correspondence they have learnt in school. As soon as children can recognise unfamiliar words they are introduced to a wider range of literature and no longer read decodable books. At The Leys importance is placed on exemplary child-adult interactions. All adults have a pivotal role to play in modelling effective language and communication. Our pedagogy ensures adults model clearly how to weave magic through literature. All teachers will read aloud, re-read and use teaching strategies e.g. asides, to build familiarity and understanding of the texts which children become emersed in.

Outcome:

As we believe that reading is key to all learning, the impact of our reading curriculum goes beyond the result of statutory assessments. Children have the opportunity to enter the wide and varied magical worlds that reading opens up to them. As they develop their own interest in books, a deep love of literature, across a range of genres, cultures and styles, is enhanced.

All children will read with speed and accuracy. This will ensure they have the stamina to reading increasingly challenging material independently. Children will be able to enjoy a range of increasingly challenging material and develop the love and gratification of reading.