Development of Reading at LWS
At LWS, we recognise the importance of every child becoming a fluent and skillful reader. Reading equips children with the skills they need to understand and absorb knowledge from across the curriculum, enrichment and to be able to fully participate in the world we live in. We have created our dedicated reading strategy, and place a great emphasis on embedding it within our curriculum.
A vital part of our programme is to have an accurate gauge on a student’s current reading ability. As such, each student is assessed twice a year with our reading diagnostic tool, to ascertain their reading age and standardised score, celebrating their progress and providing us with a detailed report on a student’s current reading ability, their strengths and areas for development. This report identifies the specific part of reading a student finds difficult, and allows us to provide targeted instruction.
This begins with quality first teaching on the area of reading need, and if this is not comprehensive enough, we then embed high quality structured interventions to provide additional support including; 1-1 targeted reading intervention, small group reading interventions, and reading to dogs to build fluency and confidence within reading.
Within the classroom, we have a range of strategies to ensure that all students are supported to develop their reading ability. These strategies range from; the use of Widget to visualise words, language learning techniques to develop vocabulary, Etymology and morphology techniques to develop word understanding, as well as contextual strategies to support reading texts. Our staff team work closely with specialist colleagues within the GFM Trust to improve our understanding of how best to support weaker readers to develop their confidence in reading.
In addition, we are also looking to develop a culture of reading across our whole school community, thorough; engagement in World Book Day, ‘Reading for enrichment’ weekly sessions,trips to the local library, engaging students in discussions about our own staff bookcases, and supporting resources with parents to guide reading at home.
