Our School Vision

At Hethersett VC Primary School we aim to:

Create fluent and confident readers who have a love for reading and can apply these skills to unlock the world around them.

Reading

At Hethersett VC Primary School, we believe that reading is at the centre of learning and key to our children accessing the breadth of our curriculum. We aim to develop children who have a love of books, exposing them to a wide variety of reading materials through our well-resourced library and rich classroom environments.  We intend to develop independent readers who can read fluently and for meaning. 

What does a lesson look like at Hethersett?

As a school we are working hard to ensure we are exposing children a variety of texts within their English lessons – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, song lyrics and picture books. Every child is taught a range of strategies to support their development to become a confident, independent reader. In Foundation and Key Stage 1, phonics is taught on a daily basis. Our lessons follow the Little Wandle scheme which enables them to segment, decode and blend words. Once they have learnt how to read, they can then learn to comprehend and understand the text they are reading. As the children progress through our school, they are encouraged to use more of these skills independently to understand and enjoy a wider range of texts. Through this they will become fluent, expressive readers with the stamina to enjoy challenging books..

Reading is taught twice a week for 45minutes by the class teacher. The main focus of these lessons is around skills outlined in the VIPERS approach - vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarising and sequencing. Our structured approach to the teaching of reading, where we as staff model the skills needed to become successful readers, allows us to show the children how we as adults take meaning from the texts.

Reading for pleasure

We know that reading at home is an essential part of children becoming excellent readers and because of this, children have a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books to choose from for home reading. It is this choice that ensures children continue to be enthusiastic and independent readers. Children are encouraged to read regularly at home, at least three times a week, from Foundation to Year 6. Children’s individual reading records are an important source of communication between home and school and it is vital that these are signed to indicate how often the child has read.

Our school library

We are working hard to keep our library up to date with high quality texts for both fiction and non-fiction. Our aim is to provide pupils with a variety of high quality texts which they are able to access and select independently for their own enjoyment. Please browse some of our suggested reads for our pupils.

Tips for reading at home

• Keep sessions short.
• Keep sessions relaxed – find a comfortable place where you and your child can settle down.
• Give lots of praise, progress may not always be fast – children do not always find the skill of reading and understanding easy to grasp.
• Talk about the book before you begin to read – look at the front cover, and the pictures (if any) and ask your child to think about or predict what the book may be about. 
• Ask questions to check your child’s understanding e.g. What might happen next? Why did something happen?
• Talk about the book afterwards – did your child enjoy it? Why? What was the best bit?
• If your child struggles over a particular word, try to find ways to help them remember it e.g. by looking at the ‘shape’ of the word, or by guessing the word from the meaning of the sentence. 
• Don’t give up on the bedtime story, even if your child is a good reader. The more stories and books your child hears, the more they will want to read. 
• Be a good model for your children – let them see you reading – anything and everything – newspapers, magazines, catalogues, books etc. – let them know that reading is a valuable skill.
• Telling them about a book or story you liked when you were a child. You may still be able to find a copy of it on the internet! 
• Making up a story or telling them about when you were a child or something that happened to you at school, remember you don’t always need a book to tell a good story. 
• Taking it in turns to read parts of the story.
• Telling them one thing you really enjoy about listening to them read.