The Yeo Moor reading curriculum is intended to create readers who are fluent, can make meaning and enjoy reading for pleasure.  We see reading as a journey in which children will develop the ability to read fluently with speed, accuracy and prosody; build mental models while they read; express opinions and make choices about their reading; and use books to develop their understanding of the world.  

Rationale:

Our reading curriculum is the key stone to all learning at Yeo Moor.   By equipping our children with the strategies to read well, we are providing a gateway to knowledge and understanding of our world and their place within it.    Research tells us that children’s life opportunities are vastly improved if they can read well and successful readers will do better academically in all subjects, not just English.   Reading will also help our children’s well-being by developing their emotional health and intelligence. 

Learning Strands:

The reading curriculum at Yeo Moor contains three key strands. These are outlined below:

Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Reading fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.  When fluent readers read silently, they recognise words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking.  Our aim is for all readers to be fluent by the end of KS1.  

Making Meaning

Making meaning or comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand or connect to what they are reading, they are not really reading. Good readers are both purposeful and active, and have the skills to absorb what they read, analyse it, make sense of it, and make it their own.  Strong readers think actively as they read. They use their experiences and knowledge of the world, vocabulary, language structure, and reading strategies to make sense of the text and know how to get the most out of it. They know when they have problems with understanding and what thinking strategies to use to resolve these problems when they pop up.

Reading for Pleasure

Once children become fluent and can make meaning, they can develop their reading interests.  Creating opportunities to choose books and develop opinions on their reading is an essential part of reading pedagogy.  All classrooms will promote a love of reading and teachers will use their knowledge of children’s literature to guide and support reading choices. 

End Points:

As a reader leaving Yeo Moor, every child will be able to:

Phonics Teaching and Reading:

At Yeo Moor, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers, regardless of their background. We endeavour to support all children to crack the phonics code as soon as possible. We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. Daily whole class phonics lessons begin in week 2 of Reception and continue throughout Key Stage 1.  We robustly follow the Little Wandle progression which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. Fidelity to Little Wandle resources and teaching methodology reduces the possibility of cognitive overload. At Yeo Moor we set ambitious targets and in our phonics lessons teach beyond the phonics screening. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. Our ambition is that all pupils are able to read fluently at a rate of at least 90 words per  minute by the end of Key Stage 1. 

Through formative assessment in Lessons and more formal 6 weekly assessments we are able to rapidly identify those children in danger of falling behind. Any child who needs additional practice has daily Keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning. 

In addition to daily phonics lessons all pupil in EYFS, Year 1 and 2 participate in three reading practice sessions per week. These sessions are taught by a fully trained adult in small groups of approximately six children. In reading practice we carefully select books that are matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge. The books used are Collins Big Cat Phonics which are aligned to the Little Wandle Progression. Children read the same book three times in a week. The first session focuses on Fluency, the second session focuses on prosody and the final session has a comprehension focus. 

Take home readers are also Collins Big Cat Phonics. They are precisely selected by a trained adult so that every child is able to read their book at a fluency rate of at least 90%. It is our expectation that every child reads at home to an adult at least five times per week.

Our core offer:

Every Yeo Moor child will share high quality texts with the class teacher.  Here is our current selection: