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
In Nursery we begin our reading journey by sharing high quality stories and poems, learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes and providing activities that develop focused listening and attention.
At Meltham Moor we teach systematic synthetic phonics using Unlocking Letters and Sounds. This begins in the first weeks of Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children learn the main sounds heard in English as well as Common Exception Words. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences.
By the end of Year 1 children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling.
In Year Two phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code. Assessments and interventions aim to ensure that no child is left behind.
For further details please see the key documents: Unlocking Letters and Sounds Progression and Actions, Images and Handwriting.
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.
