Reading
At Mile Oak, we believe that reading is central to children’s ability to access the curriculum. Reading can broaden horizons, take our children to new places and allows them to experience the impossible. Children will develop new ways of seeing, hearing and understanding the diverse and changing world they live in, through a rich diet of high-quality literature.
Children will learn the skills to decode and read words, through our systematic, synthetic phonics programme, along with learning the skills necessary for gaining understanding from texts.
We aim to foster a lifelong love of reading, ensuring all pupils read fluently, confidently and with deep comprehension.
How will we achieve our aims? 
1. Phonics
At Mile Oak, we believe strongly in ‘phonics first’. From their first day in reception, every child will work through our synthetic, systematic phonics programme.
For more information on how we teach Phonics, click here
2. Language Comprehension
Language development underpins all areas of our curriculum, from EYFS to Year 6. This is developed through talk; modelled and taught by adults following our oracy curriculum. We regularly share stories, poems and nursery rhymes, so that our children become familiar with language patterns and structures. We create a language rich environment where all adults value the importance of high-quality interactions, modelling the use of full sentences and supporting children to do the same. Talk opportunities are planned carefully through drama, role play, expressing opinions, discussion, asking and answering questions, recital and debate.
3. Fluency
Fluency is developed through focusing on four areas: accuracy, speed, expression and comprehension. Each half term, children learn a text to perform with their class. Daily fluency sessions incorporate echo reading, choral reading, text marking, paired/group reading and evaluating.
4. Guided Reading
Guided Reading is taught daily to all classes Year 1 – Year 6. These lessons focus on teaching the ‘Vipers’ comprehension skills:
5. Class Text
Class texts chosen for our Guided Reading teaching are carefully selected for their literary quality. We ensure that they are diverse and representative of our school community. These texts are often linked to our wider curriculum and are used as a stimulus for many writing units.
6. Home-School Links
Home reading is an important part of a child’s reading journey. We offer reading and phonics workshops at the start of each year, which inform families how we teach reading in school and provide them with strategies to support at home. Children continuing to work through the phonics programme take home a decodable reading book each week. All children also have weekly visits to the school library (book bus library for EYFS children), where they can choose a library book to take home.
How will we know that we have achieved our aims?
At Mile Oak, we measure the impact of the teaching of reading using a system of continuous assessment. Reading target sheets are used alongside Guided Reading lessons to assess children’s learning and allow the teachers to adapt their teaching to the needs of individual pupils.
Half-termly phonics assessments track children’s progress through our phonics programme and groups are adapted accordingly.
Termly assessment points for reading use formal tests to inform teacher assessments and children are identified as working below their year group, working at the beginning of their year group, working just at the expected standard for their year group, working securely at the expected standard for their year group, or working at greater depth within their year group.
Strong outcomes at the end of Year 1 in the Phonics Screening Check and end of KS2 SATs, which are consistently above national averages, show that our children have an excellent grasp of phonics and comprehension. Our children leave us with a love of reading and the skills to further develop themselves as readers in secondary school. Pupil voice reflects that our children have a positive attitude to reading and a passion for books.
Queries
The school Reading Lead is Mr Cosgrove.
If you have any questions about the school's Reading curriculum, please contact your child's class teacher, or Mr Cosgrove via the school office.