At Jubilee, a combination of Read Write Inc., Oxford Reading Tree and Collins Big Cat books make up our reading scheme. An engaging and wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts are available from both Key Stage One and Key Stage Two libraries for the children to enjoy and immerse themselves within. In Early Years, the children change their readers three times a week but in Years 1 and 2, the children choose a new reader daily. In both Key Stages, the children are able to take a ‘weekend book’ of their choice home to read.
Guided Reading occurs daily in Key Stage One and the children read with an adult on a one-to-one basis once a week. Discrete daily phonics sessions are undertaken in both the Early Years and Key Stage One following the Read Write Inc. Phonics.
When children reach Key Stage Two, they are moving away from simply decoding words; children have developed the skills needed to break down a word using their phonetic awareness. There is a much bigger focus on the comprehension of a text. Comprehension can include many areas but it is mainly to gain an awareness and understanding of the whole text.
There are five main areas of comprehension after basic decoding:
- Deducing the feelings of characters and the atmosphere within a scene
- Explaining the vocabulary used in the context of the genre
- Retrieving information from a text
- Inferring crucial details from events that have taken place
- Relating and comparing texts to a social context
Our independent reading books are from a variety of publishers, containing books from a range of different reading age bands. All the books have a relatively high interest age, but vary greatly in reading age. To support children with reading development, we have devised a Jubilee 'guidance table' detailing which books are appropriate for the child reading them. We have therefore colour coded the books according to the reading age (coloured stars/dots).