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