Reading
The Power of Reading
At Earlsfield we follow The Power of Reading by The CLPE (The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) Literacy is taught through high quality books and creative teaching approaches such as art and drama. It aims to engage and motivate children in their literacy learning and also enables children to deepen their understanding of texts and provides a meaningful context for writing. How are the texts used?
Quality texts are used as the basis for learning over several weeks. Children explore and discuss the text through creative activities. They also write in a range of genres as part of the unit. For example they might write a letter in role as a character or write a newspaper recount about the events in the text.
Reading aloud is a key part of the Power of Reading. The strategy enables all children to access quality texts. Reading aloud also enables the teacher to model expressive and fluent reading to the children. Children then echo what they have heard read aloud in their own writing.The Power of Reading also helps to develop inference and deduction and comprehension skills.
Some of the quality texts we use as a basis for literacy learning:
| Year Group | Books | Author |
| Year 1 |
The Naughty Bus We’re Going on a Bear Hunt Beegu Cinderella Traction Man Town Mouse, Country Mouse |
Jan Oke Michael Rosen Alexis Deacon
Aesop's Fables. |
| Year 2 | Lila and the Secret Rain
The Great Fire of London The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzl The Magic Finger Where the Wild Things Are |
David Conway
David and Ronda Armitage
Roald Dahl Maurice Sendak |
| Year 3 |
Into the Forest The Frog Prince Continued Charlotte’s Web The Village that Vanished Firebird Krindlekrax |
Antony Browne Jon Scieszka EB White Ann Grifalconi Saviour Pirotta Phillip Ridley |
| Year 4 | The Mousehole Cat
The Tinderbox The Iron Man The Great Kapok Tree Varjak Paw |
Antoni Barber Hans Christian Anderson Ted Hughes Lynne Cherry S F Said |
| Year 5 | The Adventures of Odysseus
Street Child Beowulf The Highwayman |
Lupton, Morden and Balit Berlie Doherty Kevin Crossley-Holland Alfred Noyes |
| Year 6 |
Kensuke’s Kingdom Way Home Letters from the Lighthouse The Sleeper and the Spindle Macbeth |
Michael Morpurgo Libby Hathorn/Gregory Rogers Carroll, Blanch and McEwan Neil Gamain Shakespeare |
If you walked into a guide reading session you would see
- Group discussions
- High level questioning using VIPERS questions
- Opportunities for learners to consolidate skills through recording answers
- Good choices of challenging books that are suitable for the group​
- ​Reference to the bands so the children know what they were working towards and what they mean
- Clear modelling and heads up on what the children need to work on when reading aloud
- Very strong focus on vocabulary-meanings of words, context, synonyms and antonyms.
- Active learning- using sugar paper/whiteboards to record answers.
- Text marking and close reading of chunks of texts
- Active reading-listening out for key information and vocabulary
- Questioning-lots of different question types with reference to the different skills and types of questions- retrieval, inference, prediction, summarising, vocabulary, explanation.
- Digging deeper for answers
- Encouragement of decoding for those children that need it
- Non Fiction texts-recapping on features, reinforcing knowledge
- Discussions on word choices and content/story lines/characters
- Children all enjoying the chosen texts.
- Green comprehension books but not over used. Still lots of time given over to discussion and verbal questioning.
- Children using the text to back up their answers
What do pupils tell us about reading?
What do you love about reading at Earlsfield?
Year 4 Pupil: I love how there is a library with a good selection of books. I like non-fiction books too
Year 4 Pupil: I like that there are lots of books. I like the outdoor library because I can read whatever I want and sit on beanbags (Tyler Y4)
Year 6 Pupil: I like the power of reading books because we delve into them in more detail and use them in our big writes.
How are you challenged during guided reading lessons?
Year 4 Pupil: We are challenged by reading because the vocabulary can be tricky
Year 6 Pupil: We use different styles of books and genres which are challenging as they are not styles we are used to.
Year 6 Pupil: The books we are using are challenging-the vocabulary is new and we are exposed to different sentence types.
Year 6 Pupil: Everyone is challenged through the questions because we have to use our inference skills. It gets our brains working. (Andre, Rayaan, Kavinran and Nadia Y6)
How is Reading for Pleasure promoted at Earlsfield?
Year 4 Pupil: There are the outdoor and indoor libraries. We can read for pleasure when we have finished our work. I like this because I get to learn lots of facts.
Year 4 Pupil: I feel joyful when my teacher says we can read for pleasure
Year 6 Pupil: We have a massive library so there is loads of choice
Year 6 Pupil: I like the Reading for Pleasure journals because I can express myself however I want
Year 6 Pupil: We have reading journals and indoor and outdoor libraries. We are have a wide variety of books to choose fro
