Reading At Northside

We believe, just as Dr Seuss, that

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.

 The more that you learn the more places you'll go.”

Our vision for children at Northside is for them to develop a love of literature and become fluent readers who love nothing more than to spend quality time with a ‘Terrific Text’.

Reading is at the centre of all our children’s learning and we instil an attitude of ‘reading for pleasure’ from Early Years all the way through to Year 6 and including the adults within the school. Our library is the hub of the school and outside reading dens encourage reading in free time.

Reading is celebrated each week in a whole school assembly with certificates for achievements as well as having the opportunity to select a book for ‘Golden Ticket’ winners. Teaching staff are members of our book club and read a focused book each half term.

We achieve this through starting with Phonics (using Letters and Sounds), developing to shared reading using banded books, progressing to whole class guided reading using high quality texts and achieving a love of reading through a broad range of genres for pleasure. We use DERIC to teach the skills of comprehension though whole class daily guided reading.

DERIC stands for:

• D: Decoding words
• E: Explaining new vocabulary
• R: Retrieving information
• I: Interpreting information
• C: Choice (thinking about the choices made by the author/director/artist)

Independent Reading

All children are catered for through appropriate texts, tightly linked to their ability.

• In Early Years, children read Dandelion, Floppy Phonics and move on to banded books including Oxford Reading Tree when they are ready.
• In Key Stage One, children continue to read Dandelion, Floppy Phonics  (if needed), banded books and move on to early chapter books when appropriate.
• Children in Years 1-6 follow the Reading Road Map programme which covers all genres using high-quality classics and recently released books. There are three levels of challenge for all genres.
• Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) is embedded across Key Stage Two, instilling the value and importance of independent reading, this happens straight after lunch time break wherever possible.