Reading
Our Vision
Our Aims
The overarching aim for Reading in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for Reading aims to ensure that all pupils:
Read easily, fluently and with good understanding
Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
Appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
Use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
Are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debates
How we teach Reading at Moss Park Primary
At Moss Park Primary School, reading is prioritised as a core component of the curriculum and daily school life. Our reading curriculum is carefully designed to provide children with daily opportunities to practise reading, listen to books and poems read aloud, enjoy independent reading, and engage in discussions about literature and the world around them. It is also designed to be progressive and cohesive, promoting and accelerating reading proficiency for all pupils. The reading curriculum at Moss Park follows the National Curriculum and aims to build on and enhance this. To ensure that pupils develop a secure knowledge and skills base that they can build on, reading is organised into a progression model that outlines the skills to be taught in a sequentially coherent way towards defined expectations at the end of each year and at the end of Year 6.
Phonics and Early Reading
Word recognition is explicitly taught through a systematic synthetic phonics program (Phonics Bug Club). In Reception and Year 1, children repeatedly rehearse their phonics knowledge and apply it to reading phonically-decodable books during guided reading sessions. This bridges the gap between phonetic awareness and text comprehension. Pupils are taught to decode using a carousel method. You can link to our Phonics page here: https://www.mossparkprimary.co.uk/page/phonics/147269
Fluency and Comprehension
The Moss Park Fluency Progression document outlines the specific fluency knowledge that children will acquire each year, focusing on elements like expression, pitch, juncture, volume, pace, stress, and smoothness. Through repeated practice with age-appropriate novels and extracts, children enhance their reading fluency, enabling deeper comprehension and conveying the author’s intended meaning. Our approach ensures that children learn to read and read to learn, absorbing knowledge and ideas from texts. Once pupils can confidently decode, they are taught to comprehend through whole class teaching. It is in these sessions that fluency is also prioritised.
Text Selection and Curriculum Integration
Guided reading texts include narrative, non-narrative and poetry. Narrative texts are novels that are selected to align with our core school values of Teamwork, Friendship, Perseverance, and Respect. Non-narrative texts are chosen to develop knowledge schemas, linking learning across year groups and the wider curriculum. Collectively these texts include classic literature, works from diverse cultures, and materials addressing current world issues. Our curriculum also exposes children to a variety of formats, including webpages, to reflect the modern world and develop versatile reading skills.
Reading for Pleasure and Progression
To foster a love of reading, each year group has specific, age-appropriate texts assigned to promote reading for pleasure. Our reading for pleasure curriculum is sequential and progressive, using a diverse range of authors and text complexities to ensure rich classroom discussions and clear progression in reading skills. Texts are regularly reviewed to ensure children are also exposed to modern authors and to support the children’s interests. Considerations of all texts include text length, language, literary features, format, grammar, and content. At Moss Park we plan special trips and events to encourage pupils reading for pleasure such as World Book Day, library trips, author visits, film nights and much more. Our intention is that all children will develop a life-long love of reading that will continue long after they leave our school.
Integration Across Subjects and Home Partnership
Reading is integrated into all subjects, with texts shared regularly in English, History, Geography, Science, Art, Religious Education and PSHE as well as through reading for pleasure class readers, Guided Reading sessions, and 1:1 reading with teachers, TAs, and volunteers. At Moss Park, our pupils are given book banded texts to read to an adult at school and at home. However, children are encouraged to choose books to enjoy alongside their book banded texts based on their interests and to enjoy whatever genre and style of text they wish from our school library and reading corners to read. We also partner with families through the use of pupil reading records to ensure consistent progress. We offer parent reading workshops throughout the year and have reward systems in place to celebrate home reading.
We encourage reading through a range of activities and by providing supportive environments for children to enjoy reading for pleasure.
Reading records are used to monitor reading as well as communicating between home and school. At MPPS we use a selection of quality levelled reading schemes, including Oxford Reading Tree and Collins Big Cats, to help build fluency, stamina, confidence and important reading skills that children need in order to progress. We also supplement these schemes with quality texts that are not on any scheme to ensure that the children receive a range of appropriate fiction and non-fiction texts.
Looking for a new book but not sure what to choose? This website gives you lots of brilliant suggestions based on your age and interests. We bet you will find a great book: https://www.booksfortopics.com/
More information on our book banding can be found here.
Updates, Events and Trips
Updates
We are delighted to announce that after our recent assessment in the Liverpool Reading Quality Mark, we were awarded SILVER status. This shows how the whole school is committed to ‘Reading for Pleasure’. This is a fantastic achievement for the school. A huge thank you to all of the parents, pupils, staff, governors and community who have supported us in achieving this award. A summary report of the success in meeting the criteria and the strengths of the school can be found attached to this page.
Reading Raffle Winners
Here are our Spring Reading Raffle Winners of 2024!
Events
World Book Day
Well done to this years 'Best Dressed' winners!
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Trips
Our Librarians visited WH Smiths in Stretford Mall and discussed how the manager organises their book collections. The children had sneak peeks at some new book releases and wrote their own recommendations - look out for them on the shelves!
Sooper Books - Free School Library
Sooper Books has kindly donated all of their award-winning stories and audiobooks to our school. Please use the following links to access the stories and audiobooks free of charge from school or from home:
Bedtime stories — a selection of the world’s best 5-10 minute bedtime stories and audiobooks
Fairy tales — a selection of classic fairy tales retold in a modern and fun way
Sooper Series — a selection of original stories in episode format. Each episode is a separate 10-15 minute story
Rhymes & Poems — a selection of 3-5 minute funny rhymes
Aesop’s fables — a selection of 3-5 minute moral tales, retold in a fun and modern way