Love of reading
“Reading is the one ability, that once set in motion has the ability to feed itself, grow exponentially and provide a basis from which possibilities are limitless."
- MICHAEL MORPURGO
The love of reading is the golden thread throughout our school. Every child will not only leave Meltham Moor as a reader but as a lover of reading. We aim to:
Develop happy, healthy and curious learners who read confidently and fluently
Help our pupils to develop a lifelong enjoyment of reading, taking genuine pleasure from what they read
Give our children the reading skills they need to access all areas of the curriculum
Allow all children to use reading to become immersed in other worlds both real and imagined
To create reading opportunities across all areas of the curriculum, to make it more meaningful and relevant to the children
Early reading
At Meltham Moor we use a validated systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme - FFT Success for All. This programme is followed with rigor and fidelity by all teachers and teaching assistants.
In our Nursery we use the First Step to Phonics materials which gradually introduce children to phonics. In Reception and Year 1, daily whole-class phonics lessons are taught to all children. In Years 2 and 3, children have a daily spelling lesson which is mapped out as: review, teach, practise, apply, which mirrors FFT’s Success for All phonics lessons.
To ensure that learning is embedded and revisited, reading opportunities continue throughout the day using Whole Class Shared Reading from Reception to Year 2 and additional phonics teaching is given to identified children. Phonics remains the main strategy that we use to approach/decode unfamiliar words and spelling across the school.
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Gaining fluency
At Meltham Moor we promote a 'phonics first' approach in both guided reading and home reading. Texts are closely matched to a child's current phonic knowledge so that every child can experience real success in their reading. We primarily use Ransom Reading Stars to ensure fidelity to the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression we follow.
Children then move onto our staged scheme using a variety of texts from various available schemes including Collins Big Cats and Oxford University Press, which continue throughout KS2.
Fluency and comprehension
At Meltham Moor we use Reading Vipers and The Reading Booth to deliver whole class reading. All teachers ensure that opportunities for reading and vocabulary acquisition are embedded across our school curriculum.
Reading for pleasure
At Meltham Moor we value reading for pleasure and read to children every day using a wide range of carefully selected high quality texts. Each class has a Reading for Pleasure library of take home books. We share a book weekly as part of our Wednesday assemblies and texts are displayed around school to nourish a love of reading in all our children.
