Livingstone Primary & Nursery School English

Reading

Reading is not only an important life skill, but it is the opportunity to explore new worlds, follow characters through interesting stories, grow your imagination and transport yourself to different times and places. We have carefully curated our curriculum to inspire pupils to read for pleasure, but also to develop the reading skills from the eight reading domains:

A: explaining the meaning of words in context
B: retrieving information from a text
C: summarising main ideas from the whole text or a paragraph
D: making inferences from the text (and giving evidence for these)
E: predicting what might happen next
F: explaining how information is presented on the page
G: explaining how meaning is enhanced through language and phrases
H: comparing ideas within the text and with other texts

Reading at Livingstone

From Year 2, pupils take part in comprehension lessons, where they read a short text and answer questions within a time limit. The following week, the pupils have a follow-up response lesson where they focus on specific skills they found difficult the week before. The class teacher teaches the skill and the children answer questions to practise it.

The pupils also have Guided Reading lessons during the week, where they read a short text with an adult in a small group and have opportunities to develop and practise their reading skills through in-depth discussion.

We use Accelerated Reader to assess children's reading ability in Years 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; this includes their word recognition and their understanding of vocabulary and the text.

Each half term, every child gets given an updated book level range (e.g. 3.1 to 4.5) and chooses a book from our library within that range. When they finish their book, they log into Accelerated Reader at school and complete a quiz on it. If they achieve a pass of 60% in their test, it means they have understood the book well, but 80% is what we aim for. If a child regularly passes quizzes, their teacher will encourage them to choose books at the higher end of the range; if a child doesn't achieve many passes, they will be encouraged to choose books in the lower end of the range.

All children are expected to complete a reading diary. This is monitored by the class teacher to check that pupils are reading at home.

Once a week, parents from Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are invited to join their children in the library to share a reading experience that we call 'Read With Me!'. These twenty-minute sessions are incredibly worthwhile for our pupils and parents.

Click here for the National Curriculum for English: PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_English_220714.pdf