Guided Reading

To become confident and fluent readers, children need to be given regular opportunities to apply the phonics they have learned to read fully decodable books. At Catherington, through our guided reading lessons the children read Big Cat Collins books  as the phonic progression in these books match the progression of Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics lessons taught.

Every child will have a Guided reading sessions with an adult at least three times a week. These lessons have a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory

The Reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

• decoding

• prosody – reading with meaning, stress and intonation

• comprehension – understanding the text.

Our reading practice sessions are adapted and taught to meet the needs of individuals or groups. Each book is taught over two weeks rather than one to allow children to become confident with the story and develop the skills within that text.

The decoding session might be repeated to aid fluency, or the book might be chunked up to two sessions, depending on the needs of the child.

Teaching prosody is an important skill for all children. Talking through how and why specific emphasis carries meaning beyond the words themselves is helpful in teaching how spoken prosody affects comprehension.

Comprehension is taught through talk and by making connections between the book and the children’s lives. When children make connections between books and their interests, they are growing their foundational knowledge of reading, and finding out how it will benefit them and give them pleasure.

We also encourage children to continue their reading at home. To support this, children also take home with them a decodable book which matches their guided reading level. Children are encouraged to change their book twice a week. We also offer access to Collins e-books where children can access electronic versions of books that match their guided reading levels.

Reading Spines

At Catherington we want to instil a love of reading in all our children. As well as being a form of escapism and being good for mental health, reading also opens up the world to children by giving them a window to the wider world. For this reason each class has a “reading spine” of books.

These are key books that offer rich vocabulary and culturally diverse tales that reflect the ever changing world our children are growing up in. We also want all our children to be able to be able to see themselves in the stories they read.  

Each class has their own reading spine which supports the topics and themes learnt throughout the year, offers other books written by authors the children have studied and books that are there just for pure entertainment.

Book of the month

To celebrate the love of reading we also have a book of the month. Each month a different book is chosen which usually links to a subject, theme, or seasonal event. This book is read in each class and allows all children to be able to share discussions about a book they have read or listened to.