Reading

At Elm Academy we believe that reading underpins the entire curriculum and therefore put it at the forefront of pupil’s learning. Our aim is for every pupil, irrespective of background, to become fluent and confident readers. From the moment pupils join Elm Academy, we encourage them to build progressively on reading skills whilst engaging them in high quality, enjoyable texts. We do this through rigorous and meticulous planning, carefully monitoring the sounds and reading skills pupils are being taught, regular half termly assessments to monitor outcomes and ensuring the books they are reading are in line with these. This gives our pupils the opportunity to embed and apply new learning before moving onto more challenging texts. This not only develops their skills as readers but fosters a love of reading, something we hope they build upon and keep for life. By embedding reading into our curriculum (carefully choosing a range of challenging texts from a wide variety of authors and genres) we ensure pupils are exposed to reading opportunities consistently, giving them the opportunity to embed and extend their understanding in a range of contexts.

We teach phonics using the Read Write Inc (RWI) synthetic phonics scheme. This begins during the summer term in Nursery and continues until the end of Year 2 or if they complete the programme. When pupils have completed the scheme they move onto RWI Comprehension until the end of Year 2.

Reading Champions

At Elm Academy, we want all our pupils to develop a love of reading during their time here and to become confident, proficient readers. To ensure this happens, we provide numerous opportunities to develop reading for all year groups across our broad curriculum. These include Phonics sessions, Whole Class Reading lessons, Reading Comprehension sessions, Story Time, regular 1:1 reading with a class teacher or teaching assistant, a vast selection of accurately banded books for your child to choose from to take home and much more. To support the children further, it is vital that they read at home daily, even if only for a short time. This could include reading to an adult, a sibling or independently. Every time our pupils read at home, we ask for a comment to be written in their planner so we can monitor who is reading daily.

Our reading reward scheme is called Elm Academy Reading Champions and is aimed to celebrate those pupils who are reading daily at home, this is monitored by looking at the comments in their planner. Teachers choose pupils at random each week to discuss what they have read at home and to discuss the comments in their planners with.

Those pupils that read daily each week will receive five minutes extra play on a Friday and a House Point. As well as this they will support their class to win a prize at the end of each term for the class that has read the most. Those that have not read daily that week will use the time when their peers are having their extra five minutes play to catch up on some reading.

If pupils read every day for a term, they will receive the weekly rewards, their photo will go on our whole school Reading Champions display and they will receive an Elm Academy Reading Champions book mark in Celebration Assembly. The rewards are then presented at the end of each term.

Fresh Start Intervention

Read Write Inc. Fresh Start is a catch-up and intervention programme with proven results, for 9 to 13-year-olds still learning to read. It teaches pupils to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension, to spell correctly and compose their ideas for writing step-by-step.

Developed by Ruth Miskin, Read Write Inc. Fresh Start uses a proven phonics-based approach and:

Accelerates pupils’ progress with finely levelled Modules, supplemented by age-appropriate Anthologies.
Engages pupils with high-interest, age-appropriate reading and writing materials that are matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ‘tricky’ words.
Supports EAL pupils with a greater emphasis on comprehension, as well as revised punctuation, vocabulary and grammar activities.
Includes a clear structure to help you fit Fresh Start into your timetable, with step-by-step teacher guidance for all lessons and with day-by-day lesson plans that integrate all reading and writing activities.

After assessing our pupils half termly, we target pupils across Years 4-6 whose reading age is below their chronological age with the Read Write Ins. Fresh Start reading intervention. This targeted intervention, lead by professionally trained TAs, leads to rapid progress in pupils’ reading ability, as well as increased confidence with reading.

World Book Day

At Elm Academy we love to celebrate reading! All of our pupils look forward to World Book Day and the fun activities we will do based around reading each year. Please see below some of the photos of some of the activities we do including; Character Dress Up, Extreme Reading, and AFC Bournemouth Players coming in to read with some of our pupils.

For more ideas on how you can celebrate reading all year round, please go the World Book Day website https://www.worldbookday.com/or go visit our local library https://www.fid.bcpcouncil.gov.uk/kb5/poole/fis/service.page?id=2JK5FRKVIcs