Reading

At Childwall Valley Primary School reading is at the heart of our curriculum and we recognise that it underpins all subjects. Our aim is to ensure our pupils leave us as skilled and motivated readers with a love of reading. We are committed to ensuring all our pupils become successful readers who can confidently discuss the books they have enjoyed.

 


Reading Spine

 

We understand the importance of ensuring all our pupils are exposed to a range of quality texts and have carefully mapped these our in our Reading Spine.

The aim of this reading spine is to provide an extensive list of books which staff use as whole class reads and quality texts for writing . The intention is that by the time they reach year 6 and beyond, they have developed a wide, rich vocabulary and broader knowledge of the world and, as a result, are able to access the more complex books expected of them.

Key Reads and Suggested Texts

In addition to our reading spine , which sets out clearly our key driver texts, we also have our Key Reads and Suggested Texts. This document identifies specific books for each year group that may follow a specific theme or cover an area of the curriculum. There are also books which are listed to continue to ensure we have a breadth of coverage of different text types and genre.

In EYFS and KS1 these books are shared during whole class story time while in KS2 these books are covered in their daily reading lessons where they will share and discuss them while developing their reading VIPER skills.

Reading VIPERS

Children are explicitly taught the skills of reading through the use of VIPERS which were created by Rob Smith (The Literacy Shed). VIPERS is an anagram to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum. They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

In KS1 the six reading domains are: Vocabulary, Inference, Predict, Explain, Retrieve and Sequence.

In KS2 the six reading domains are: Vocabulary, Inference, Predict, Explain, Retrieve and Summarise. .

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions. They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.

  • Reading VIPERS Progression Map

    This progression map clearly details how the six reading domains are built upon during the children’s journey at Childwall Valley Primary.

    VIPERS Progression Map

  • KS1 Question Stems

    These question stems can be used to help develop comprehension skills of KS1 pupils.

    KS1 Question Stems

  • KS2 Question Stems

    These question stems can be used to help develop comprehension skills of KS2 pupils.

    KS2 Question Stems

  • VIPERS Question Pack

    VIPERS Question Pack

Early Reading

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school.  Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.  We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves.  This is why we put our efforts into making sure they develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

 

At Childwall Valley  Primary School, we follow the  Read Write Inc. phonics scheme. Children are grouped according to their ability across Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 to ensure that teaching is suited to their level. Phonics in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 takes place on a daily basis and in Key Stage 2 where applicable.

  • RWI

    To find out more about Read Write Inc at Childwall Valley Primary School then follow this link.

    Read Write Inc

  • EYFS

    Our Early Reading begins in our fabulous Early Years. This page will tell you all you need to know about the amazing work that our EYFS staff do there.

    EYFS

  • Oxford Reading Owl

    Oxford Owl has many Read Write Inc resources including online Read Write Inc books.

    Oxford Owl

Our Reading Scheme

Once our children complete the Read Write Inc phonics scheme, they then move onto our Reading scheme, the Oxford Reading Tree and within this we have a variety of different series including Biff, Chip and Kipper series, Time Chronicles and Project X. As the UK’s most successful reading scheme, Oxford Reading Tree is currently used in over 80% of primary schools and has helped millions of children from all over the world learn to read and love to read.

All reading schemes have a careful structure designed to support the teaching in class and to ensure that when a child takes a book home they can read it successfully, build confidence and make progress. We assess all our pupils using PM Benchmarking and this allows us to ensure our pupils have a book perfectly matched to their reading ability.

Each book in the scheme is carefully banded. Book bands are used across Oxford reading schemes to indicate the reading level of each book. . You will see our Oxford 'levels' alongside book band colours on the back of each Oxford Reading Tree book. (These are found on the back of the books themselves). Our Book Banding Chart also matches these against the PM Benchmarking assessment tool that we use.

Reading Standards