Reading

Curriculum Statement

 "Reading is to the mind what exercise is the body"

Intent

Bromley Beacon Academy places great importance on reading since it is a vital skill for all students to learn. Our Reading curriculum is designed to ensure all students know that reading is an open door to all other learning opportunities. They understand that reading frequently makes them a good reader, and being a good reader expands their world. Our students will embrace their own individual reading journey and will celebrate their reading milestones as they develop new strategies, learn new words, explore different genres, discover unknown authors, experience unfamiliar settings and unpick hidden meanings. We promote independence and encourage all students to read for pleasure, both in school and at home. We recognise that everyone learns at different rates and that reading involves more than just decoding print on a page, it involves listening, questioning and understanding. Our main strategy for reading at Bromley Beacon Academy is to enhance fluency and accuracy in reading which will encourage confidence in reading. By continually reflecting on their own reading journey, our children will not only be able to read, but most importantly, will want to read.

We have many enrichment opportunities which give the students the experiences that further support their engagement with reading. There are 5 areas that reading helps with:

• Exercises & develops the brain

• Improves concentration

• Improves vocabulary & develops imagination

• Develops self-esteem & confidence

• Relaxes the body and calms the mind

Implementation

We do this through:

• Developing children’s competence in both dimensions of reading: word reading and comprehension.
• Prioritising reading for all students; giving them the knowledge and skills to decode, learn and recognise a growing bank of words.
• Ensuring Quality First Teaching, where every child is treated as an individual, and additional support is put in place to make sure all children can ‘keep up’.
• Fostering an appreciation and love of reading for all of our children.
• Placing books, texts and images at the heart of daily school life.    
• Ensuring all of our children transition to their next educational setting as enthusiastic, fluent and confident readers.
• A variety of rewards and incentives are used to encourage and motivate students to read for pleasure.

When students join the school, they are assessed for reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Assessment data is used to inform further assessments, teaching, planning and intervention as needed. They are also assessed for Visual Stress, to see if they would benefit from using a coloured overlay to improve their speed, accuracy or comfort when reading.

The school has a well stocked library with a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, and reading resources to suit all abilities and interests. We are happy to purchase particular books for individual students upon request.

Students are able to take books & magazines home through our ‘Book Share Scheme’, and we recommend that students read for 20 minutes per day at home when possible. Support is available for parents and carers in supporting their reading at home. Parents/carers must sign up to this scheme; details are available from the Quality of Education Lead.

Reading for pleasure is the main message behind our reading here at Bromley. We use Accelerated reader, Myon and First news as some of the tools to promote reading. We also have DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) each Thursday afternoon during tutor time to support students with the routines of reading.

It is important that students understand that all reading is worthwhile and can help them on their journey to becoming successful in the future. To encourage reading for pleasure we have a wide range of resources and strategies to enable even the most reluctant readers so they grow in confidence.

Reading currently takes place during tutor group sessions throughout the week. Students needing more support with reading, on a 1:1 or small group basis, have timetabled access to reading intervention during these sessions with Reading Leaders and/or School Staff.

Impact

Phonics

At Bromley Beacon Academy, we follow the Letters and Sounds scheme to teach phonics apart from Green Class who follow the Jolly Phonics scheme. The aim is to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonetic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills to children with the aim of them becoming fluent readers. Phonics sessions are taught throughout KS1 and KS2 and then consolidated within specific English ability groups in KS3. Children will have a 15-20 minute phonics session at least 4 times a week at the beginning of the day.

The phonic sessions will include a mixture of written work and interactive games during which the children will be recognising, learning and identifying sounds, blending sounds to make words and practicing writing them through dictation of words and sentences.

Guided Reading

At Bromley Beacon Academy, we use a programme called Myon to support teaching reading through guided reading sessions. This is a programme that allows the students to have access to over 1000 books on line. The students are grouped according to their reading age and work daily for 20 minutes at least four times a week with their teacher. During this session, the students read together, explore books together and secure an understanding of comprehension, inference and deduction skills that support their fluency in reading.

Assessment

Bromley Beacon Academy assesses all students upon entry to establish baseline data in reading comprehension, single word reading and single word spelling. All data is reported in a standardised score format enabling students to be compared to their peers nationally. Students with a standardised score of less than 90 are tested twice per year.

This data is then used to inform classroom planning and identify those students who would benefit from further intervention. Dependent upon their level of need, this may be classroom-based within a small-group or withdrawal from class to take part in a bespoke small-group or 1:1 programme. This work aims to overcome barriers to learning, build resilience and confidence and increase self-esteem.