Developing reading accuracy, fluency and a love for reading is essential for all children. Your support at home is vital in ensuring your child is successful at school.
Our home learning expectation is that all pupils read every day at home for at least 10 minutes. Pupils who read for pleasure generally achieve at a higher level across the curriculum compared to pupils who do not, so this small amount of targeted homework makes a great difference to your child's academic, and personal, outcomes.
Consider the advantage a Year 6 pupil who is sitting their formal assessments and has read daily at home over their seven years at primary school has over their peer who has not. A child who has read, or who has been read with, daily over their time at primary school will have read for an additional 640 hours - that is going to make a significant difference to that child's academic and personal progress.
Of course, what pupils read matters too.
Pupils who are learning phonics in KS2 through the Little Wandle Rapid Catch Up programme will bring home fully decodable Big Cat Books once a week. It is vital for pupils who are still receiving phonics support that they are read with at home every day in order to support their catch-up. It is intentional that pupils bring the same book home multiple times to support them in developing their reading fluency.
Pupils who have graduated from the phonics programme (usually at the end of Year 1 or early in Year 2) move onto our banded books in the library and use the Accelerated Reader program to quiz, track and choose books in and out of school.
Accelerated Reader provides pupils with regular opportunities to demonstrate understanding and knowledge of the texts they read, opportunities to practise reading skills and helps to improve reading engagement among pupils.
We provide opportunities for children to quiz inside of school as well, and track this closely to ensure engagement with reading from all our pupils.
For more information about Accelerated Reader and how to use it at home to support your child, please read the Welcome to Accelerated Reader letter.
Your support in your child's development as a reader is exceptionally important. The links below can support you to ensure your child's reading and communication skills are developing well at home.
Book Finder (by age): https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/bookfinder/