Greenleas is proud of the importance reading has in our curriculum, which empowers our children to become confident, enthusiastic, independent readers. Through a carefully planned programme of teaching and learning, children progress from hearing and recognising sounds in the environment, through segmenting and blending the sounds in words, to developing comprehension, fluency and resilience in reading independently across a range of genres. In learning to read, Greenleas children understand that they can read to learn, and our curriculum supports this ideology by inspiring our children to read more in order to broaden and deepen their knowledge. This prepares them well for future study as they transition to middle school.
Reading is taught through a blend of methods; primarily in the lower years through the Bug Club systematic synthetic phonics programme and matched reading books. This is reinforced by regular reading to an adult for decoding and comprehension, and from Year 2 by weekly spellings to learn and practise at home. As the children progress this is extended to include guided reading and independent comprehension work to build skills in appreciation, interpretation, fact-finding, inference and deduction.
Our books are colour banded according to difficulty and progress from purely phonics-based decodable material for early readers, to books with a more advanced writing style and/or subject matter. Additionally reading books are supplemented by stock from our Library from which children can borrow one title per week to promote reading for information and pleasure. Children are also encouraged to read in class frequently through shared reading activities and opportunities for quiet reading in class.