At Airedale Infant Academy, reading is at the heart of everything we do! We foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing our children to various literature across all curriculum areas. We believe reading opens up 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 love 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 and quality literature is implicitly interwoven into our curriculum through the use of key texts to expose our children to various genres and famous authors and to enhance the variety of exciting topics that we teach.
In our Early Years classrooms we have a wealth of books and provide a wide range of opportunities to develop pupils’ early language skills. In Early Years we teach phonics sessions daily using the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme. Children are taught listening skills from Nursery and the skill of segmenting and blending orally, these skills are then built upon as they develop new phonic skills in Reception.
They are given opportunities to apply these in the context of reading and writing. They are also taught how to handle books. They learn that all print carries meaning and begin to develop an understanding of story structure and characters through adults enthusiastically sharing and discussing books.
Reading Provision in School
Across school we encourage children to develop a love of reading. In the heart of our school, we have two large library areas filled with a wealth of texts and comfortable seating areas for small groups of children or whole classes to use and enjoy reading new stories and texts together.
In all of our classrooms, we have bespoke themed reading areas, which feature a range of high quality texts and audio books for the children to enjoy. Children have opportunities throughout the week to use their reading areas both in their classrooms and in our main library area, promoting a love of reading.
Pupils in our Early Years develop their language rapidly. This is achieved through our environments being communication friendly and language rich spaces.
Every year in school, we take part in many book related events to raise money for charity or to celebrate a love of reading through events such as World Book Day.
Take a look at our photos below of a range of reading events that we have taken part in and our reading environments.
How do you teach my child to read?
Reading is taught daily, right through school from Nursery up to Year 2.
Children begin their reading journey in Nursery with a focus on listening and attention skills before moving onto set 1 sounds in Read Write Inc. This concentrates on developing speaking and listening skills and has an emphasis on enabling children to become attuned to the sounds around them whilst developing the skills of oral blending and segmenting. Pupils learn how to hold a book the right way, how to turn pages, how to explore pictures, and are exposed to hearing stories – all vitally important skills to begin the reading journey.
Within Reception and Year 1, reading is taught through both literacy-focused activities based on high quality texts and through specific teaching of the Read Write Inc phonics programme.
The skills of reading comprehension are taught discreetly throughout school during timetabled comprehension lessons in Year 2 and through daily whole class or guided reading sessions based upon the principles of John Murray – reading consultant and the author of Reading Rocketeers.
Please see below for a pre-recorded parent reading workshop for you to watch at home if you are unable to attend. This will explain to you how we teach children to read in school from Nursery up to Year 1.
At Airedale Infant Academy, we use the ‘Read Write Inc’ programme to introduce children to phonics (letters and their sounds) and to teach them the basic skills they need for reading, spelling and writing.
At the link https://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/ you will find a series of information and tutorial videos explaining the basics of Read Write Inc. Phonics. These videos will help you to understand how we teach reading in school and to support your child at home. Click links below to see the videos.
What will be inside my child’s book bag?
We see home-school links as a vital part of the reading process. We encourage parents to be involved in their child’s early reading development and parents in EYFS and KS1 are invited to Reading workshops and parent open afternoons, which model the vital skills of early reading to parents.
Every child is provided with a reading record and a book that links directly to the sounds that your child knows. This ensures that reading is a positive experience for all and allows all children to become confident and develop speed and fluency.
We ask for all parents to listen to your child read a minimum of three times per week and to record this in their reading records.
Children receive rewards, for achieving three reads during a week, such as stickers in their reading records, celebrations on our Reading Champions display and Dojo points.
Online Reading
As reading is so important at Airedale Infant Academy, we reccomend that all children and parents sign up for a free reading account on Oxford Owl.
The website provides you with access to many online e-books that your child can read for enjoyment at home.
If you would like further information regarding your child’s reading, please speak to your child’s class teacher who will be happy to discuss this further.
Hey there, couldn’t help noticing you’re using Internet Explorer
That’s great and all, and we commend you for pushing through with it. Unfortunately we no longer offer support for IE; it hasn’t received a major update since 2015 and Microsoft are dropping support for it later in the year.
If you’re using Windows 10 and want to stick with a built in browser, please consider switching to Edge. Or, if you really want to enjoy the internet properly we strongly recommend downloading Google Chrome here.
