Marsden Infant & Nursery School

Throughout the school, all staff work hard to create a positive and welcoming environment for reading. In order to become a good reader, it is vital that children develop a love for reading and regularly read and share books. We encourage all children to read independently for pleasure. 

We have put in place many strategies to promote confident, independent and happy readers:

Each classroom has a welcoming, cosy reading area with a wide variety of books such as poetry, non-fiction, picture books and big books. Each class makes sure that their book boxes reflect the current topic and children's interests. The children are encouraged to access these areas independtly and are able to borrow books from here to take home.

We also have a school fiction and non-fiction library that small groups of children are able to access during the week. Furthermore, each class enjoys a half termly visit to the village library where they learn library skills and borrow books for the classroom.

Every day each class has a story time where the children are either read and respond to a story read by the teacher or another pupil or they are given E.R.I.C time (Everyone reading in class) which can be done in pairs or independently. Adults, from staff to reading friends and governors, also read their favourite books to the children in whole school collective worship time in order to promote reading for enjoyment.

Throughout the year in Y2, we are very lucky to have voluntary reading friends from the community who come and support individual children with thier reading. In summer term, in order to support the transition to the juniors, the Y2's are giving Y3 reading buddies that come in once a week.

We also celebrate 'World Book Day' each year and hold a yearly 'Bounce for Books' sponsor to raise money to buy new books for school.

Remember reading is vital to your child's education as it helps them access all areas of the curriculum. So please help support us to support your children by sharing books at home and talking about what they or you have read! It will help make a big difference!

Reading is about more than just learning to read words. It is also about developing a knowledge of how books work, understanding and enjoying what has been read.

Much of the teaching of reading is centred around phonics and decoding, as this underpins everything and provides a foundation on which to develop the other skills such as comprehension.

We teach phonics using the DfE Letters and Sounds Document as a basis for planning our phonics. We use Jolly Phonics as a resource to support our teaching and make it fun for the children.

We teach the children to read in a variety of ways, such as those outlined below:

Whole Class

Many of the skills needed for reading are taught constantly through short, whole class sessions, usually a Literacy session, though also through cross-curricular topics. As well as teaching the children to use phonics to decode words, we also teach them how the grammar and illustrations in a book can provide clues to help read an unknown word.

Individual Reading

When children are first starting to learn to read in school we like to hear them read individually as often as possible, though the actual amount can vary depending on the size of the class and the number of additional adults supporting the teacher.

Guided Reading

This is where a group of children who can read and understand text at a similar level are taught the skills they need in a small group session. This is the primary way of reading with children in Key Stage 1 and we aim to have 2 guided reading sessions a week for each group of children. In Reception and early Key Stage 1, children will begin to read in small groups when they are developmentally ready.

Reading Scheme

At Marsden Infant & Nursery School, we do not use a commercially bought reading scheme. We believe that real books foster a lifelong enjoyment of reading and all our texts are carefully researched and selected to cover a variety of genres and reading abilities. Within our real book scheme, we do have books that are phonic based, and some which belong to commercial schemes as these are also relevant and appropriate texts for children to learn from and enjoy. When selecting books for children to read with an adult in school, we take into account the level the child is reading at, the assessment focuses they need to work on next and the topic/genre we are learning about. We allow a greater freedom of choice in the books the children can select to take home. This is to help the children develop a love of reading through sharing a variety of books at home, and even if they cannot read all the text themselves, by listening to and discussing a book they can still learn valuable skills for their own reading.

Reading Friends

We are very lucky to have a few committed volunteers who come in regularly to read with children in school. Most of our Reading Friends work on a 1-1 basis with the same child for a short session twice a week over an extended time. This provides extra individual reading for children who may be at risk of falling behind for a variety of reasons. This has proved very valuable over the last few years and has helped many children become confident and capable readers.

Some volunteers who cannot commit to regular twice weekly sessions will come in for part of a morning or afternoon and hear a variety of children read, again, providing that little extra 1-1 reading that is so important.

If you are able and would like to become one of our Reading Friends (or know of anyone else who would like to) please pop in to the school office and let us know. Your help would be greatly appreciated and valued.

One of the most important ways to help your child become a confident and able reader is to read with and to them as often as possible. If your child is not yet able to read themselves, the more you read to them and share books with them, the stronger a foundation you will be laying for them when they learn to read. Also, when your child sees you reading for pleasure or a purpose, this models good reading habits and encourages them to want to read too.  For some ideas to help younger children develop pre-reading skills, click here. 

Once your child is beginning to read for themselves, encouragement and support are really important as well as knowing what to do to help them. Your child can choose a book to take home from school whenever they like and you are more than welcome to come in and help them when you drop them off or pick them up. Here are a few suggestions for how to help your child read:

• Encourage them to track the words with their finger. This develops an understanding that words have meaning and we read from left to right.
• Help them to sound out words using their phonic knowledge and to recognise tricky words or repeated words in the text.
• Talk about what is happening in the pictures. They can be a great help in predicting what an unknown word might be.
• Ask questions about what has been read. There are some suggestions here for the kind of questions you can ask children in Year 1 or 2.
• If the book is too hard, read it with them and focus on the comprehension side. Usually, if a child can read 9 out of 10 words, the book is at an appropriate level for them. You can try the ‘5 finger test’ to help your child determine if a book is too hard by themselves. Get your child to hold up 5 fingers and have a go at reading the first page of the book. Every time they cannot read a word, ask them to put a finger down. If all 5 fingers are down by the end of the first page, the book is probably too hard for them to read independently. But that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy the story with some help!