Reading and Comprehension – How these are taught

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai.

At Burnham-on-Crouch Primary School we believe that reading is a central, essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers, who have the confidence, drive and passion for the opportunities that books contain.

At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully chosen texts that spark imagination, provoke thought, celebrate culture and diversity and are language rich.

Storytelling; exploring poetry, song and rhyme and high quality non-fiction texts are embedded within our curriculum to develop pupils’ vocabulary, language comprehension and love of reading.

We not only teach reading, but across the school, pupils and staff, we love reading. Please check out our Instagram and your child’s Google Classroom class page for even more details.

How will my child be taught to read?

Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for future success. We use a balanced mix of approaches to reading so that all pupils are able to succeed, which include: Read Write Inc. phonics, Fresh Start Phonics, teaching of reading comprehension, reading for pleasure, individual and group reading and sharing high quality texts within the classroom.

For more information on Phonics, please see the Read, Write, Inc section of the website (link if possible)

How will reading books for home be arranged?

We aim to provide all children with stimulating, appropriate home reading books to share with parents as soon as they enter Reception. These include wordless books within the first week of school and then as sounds are taught through our chosen systematic, synthetic phonics programme, Read Write Inc., decodable books are then carefully matched to each child’s phonic knowledge.

As children reach the end of the RWI scheme, they move on to the Oxford Reading Tree Levels, reading books from the purple book band and beyond; this is typically at the end of Year 2.

By, or before the end of Year 4, children are typically ready for the Free Reader stage, where they can select a book from our KS2 library.

How will my child learn comprehension?

Early comprehension starts with Read, Write, Inc and focuses on word decoding and early reading. Around this, as part of reading activities in EYFS and Year 1, any early activity where learners find out about objects or processes and try to explain them is a form of comprehension. These skills directly link to later learning.

From Year 2, comprehension starts with formal teaching. We teach algorithmically and pupils extend this heuristically. This means that children learn repeatable processes on how to answer questions (algorithms) and then extend this to finding their own logical shortcuts to answers, based on wider reading and repeated instruction and practice (heuristics). These sustained, technical processes carry on across the school.

Focused comprehension lessons are taught at least once a week, beginning in Year 2.

Technical comprehension skills do not need to be used or taught at home – simply talking about and sharing books is easy, rewarding and helps build discussion skills that can be used at school too.

What can I do to help?

Working with your child to help them develop a life-long love of reading is a wonderful thing! The great news is that it neither means a lot of time or specialist knowledge at home.

There are some really great things that can be done to help. If your child is learning phonics, please also see the Phonics page for specific help that links to the Read, Write, Inc scheme.

It can be useful to have some open-ended questions ready to help your child explain what they are reading. The following can be a good start:

• Talking about picture books:

Describe your favourite part of the book

Describe (or show me) your favourite picture in the book

What do you like about the pictures?

Who was your favourite character and why?

Why did you enjoy the book?

Which character would you like to be? Why?

• Talking about fiction:

Why did you enjoy the book?

Describe your favourite part of the book

What didn’t you like about the book?

Who was your favourite character and why?

If one of the characters could come to your house for tea, who would you like to have visit?

If you had to describe this book in one word, what word would you chose?

Have you read any other books by this author? Was this one better and why?

• Talking about non-fiction / information books:

What was your favourite fact from the book?

Why did you enjoy the book?

Tell me one fact that you learnt about that you didn’t know before

Filler questions:

Seriously? Then what happened?

Interesting! What else can you tell me about?

For further hints and tips, please see the links below.

Government Advice – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read

The Book Trust – https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/tips-and-advice/reading-tips/

Penguin Books – https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/childrens-article/how-to-help-your-child-learn-to-read

Burnham Library (they also host children’s reading activities) – https://libraries.essex.gov.uk/digital-content/our-library-locations-and-opening-times/burnhamoncrouch-library

Southminster Library – https://libraries.essex.gov.uk/digital-content/our-library-locations-and-opening-times/southminster-library