Reading Strategy

At Airedale Junior Academy, reading is at the heart of everything we do. We want to foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing our children to various literature across all curriculum areas. We believe reading opens a new world for children and gives them the opportunity to explore new ideas, visit new places, meet new characters and develop a better understanding of other cultures. Through building up the children’s vocabulary, it gives them the word power they need to become successful speakers and writers as well as confident readers. Reading is a key life skill, and we strive to embed a culture of reading into the core of what we do. We provide opportunities for children to read both independently and aloud, as well as allowing them the chance to discuss and recommend books they have read to their peers. Reading quality literature is implicitly interwoven into our curriculum using key texts to expose our children to various genres as well as famous authors to enhance the variety of exciting topics that we teach.

At Airedale Junior Academy, our reading curriculum provides all pupils with:

Daily reading lessons
Books directly matched to their reading ability (phonics or free choice reading)
Daily story times
Opportunities to visit the local library
Opportunities to visit the school library and borrow a book of their choice
A range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry books

How is reading taught progressively?

For Key Stage 2 children who are still developing early reading skills, targeted support is provided through the Read Write Inc. (RWI) daily phonics programme. Children are regularly assessed and grouped by ability, ensuring teaching is closely matched to their GPCs knowledge.

They build their phonics knowledge and apply this when reading decodable books. As their confidence and fluency grow, they move on to a wider range of texts. Once secure, they progress to Reading Cycles, where they develop comprehension skills and learn to understand and respond to what they read with increasing independence.

When pupils have completed the Phonics programme, they progress onto Reading Cycles which follows the cycle as shown below to guide our teachers to ensure all pupils are taught the necessary skills to comprehend the texts they are reading.