St Gregory & St Patrick's Catholic Infant School
Reading
At St Gregory and St Patrick’s Infant School we love reading!
When Children join us as early as Pre Nursery, we instil a love of reading. Children have story time and rhyme time several times a day. Children and parents are also able to take home with them story sacks, to continue this love of reading at home too. Sharing books is given a huge priority, with two book areas within the provision. Children regularly visit the mobile library van and select books they would like to read. We have also recently included a new book shelf in the Pre Nursery entrance with books that are pre loved that parents are encouraged to take home to share and keep.
When children reach Nursery, they are introduced to daily phonics sessions, focusing on listening for and distinguishing between different sounds, we refer to this as "getting ready to read". In the summer term, our children who will move into Reception in the following September, start with our Read Write Inc programme. The Nursery provides books in all areas of the environment to support each area of learning. Children also have a specific rhyme station where they can listen to and join in with nursery rhymes and songs. 'Talk for Writing' is introduced in Nursery too, focusing on common texts that children are familiar with, such as Jack and the Beanstalk. Each week, children take home a story sack to share; after reading children are encouraged to complete some fun activities linked to the stories and draw a picture from the book. These story sacks are based around favourite known texts, mathematics based books and stories linked to Knowledge and Understanding of the World.
When children reach Reception, each child is assessed and grouped by ability to start our Read Write Inc programme. All staff members within Reception and Key Stage 1 are allocated their own phonics group. In Reception, children have daily 40 minute sessions, beginning with speed sounds for set 1 moving onto learning set 2 & 3 sounds alongside sharing ditty sentences and red story books. Children will then take home the book they have shared in their phonics group, a book that closely matches this and a bed time story for parents to read and enjoy with their child. Reading books are something we have spent time organising, so that children take home books that match their current phonetic ability but provides a certain amount of challenge too.
This continues into Year 1 and children soon move onto free readers when they have completed the Read Write Inc programme.
Children visit the local Library in Whitehaven in each year group and have weekly access to the school library. We enjoy celebrating World Book Day and dedicate this day to reading for pleasure. We are also eager to ensure that reading for pleasure happens daily, with specified book areas in each class and selected texts which make up our year group reading spines that we read over and over again so children gain confidence with this list of 15 books which runs from Pre Nursery to Year 2.
Each Wednesday we hold a whole school Story Assembly . Each week we have a different reading theme. Different adults take the assemblies each week so children see a wide range of adults reading. Once a story has been shared we discuss the theme of the text and each class are given their special book bag including a new title based around the weekly theme to share back in classes. Classes are encouraged to share their books within the year band until they are returned the following week at the next Book Assembly.
To involve parent we post a read aloud version of one of these books to our Facebook page as our "Book of the Week."
Our aim is for each and every child in our care to love reading and leave us being a confident and enthusiastic reader!
Library Visits
See below some photos from our termly visits to our local library.
These trips differ each term, some are visits with the librarian leading the session, some are session where parents are invited to join us in the library and other sessions are teacher led relating to our current year group topic.
Library Van Visits/ Links with our Library's
We have regular visits fro the local library van. At each visit each class has an opportunity to swap the books they have in class and often share a story told by the librarian. the children love an opportunity to select new books for class, these books are then shared in class tie and during continuous provision. all children from Pre-Nursery to Year 2 enjoy these visits.
Furthermore we receive termly "topic boxes" from the library for each year group linking to their termly theme, this selection of books offer opportunities to read fiction and non fiction books.
Our School Library
Reading Spines
This year, we have introduced year band reading spines. These lists have been carefully compiled in year bands ensuring a range of texts are explored throughout the year. We have used fiction and non fiction, poetry, classic books, books that raise current issues such as climate change etc and texts that include a range of cultures. We want these books to form the backbone of our class reading. Children will be read each text regularly and have access to these books in continuous provision. Each year group has 15 set texts that we hope children will love hearing again and again so that they are confident retelling the story themselves!
Book Assembly
This is our second year of holding weekly "Book Assemblies" below is the list of texts we have explored During Autumn term.
Reading Suggestions
Each year, we send parents the latest version of "Books for Topics" year band lists. These are the top 50 suggested book lists for pre Nursery, Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. We say to parents that they are a good list for using when visiting the library or when looking for Christmas gifts. We also suggest searching on you tube to watch the story being read.
Please click on the links below to match the age of your child:
Nursery:
https://www.booksfortopics.com/preschool
Reception:
https://www.booksfortopics.com/reception
Year1:
https://www.booksfortopics.com/year-1
Year 2:
https://www.booksfortopics.com/year-2
Nursery Rhymes for Nursery
Each week our Nursery children and Pre Nursery children learn a new rhyme. these rhymes have been carefully selected by our music co-ordinator so children d not repeat the rhymes each year. We inform parents each week via Facebook of the new rhyme children have been learning and a link to the rhyme on you tube so parents can share this at home with their child and celebrate their learning. We feel Nursery Rhymes are a key way for our youngest children to start their literacy journey and find pleasure in doing so.
We are also proud to be part of "Nursery Rhyme week" celebrations.
Supporting parents with Reading and Phonics
We are eager to ensure all parents are confident reading with their child and have a knowledge of how we tech their child to read In order to do this each year group hold regular parents workshop days throughout the year. We have a huge take up on these days, as we involve the children in these workshops which we feel help to make parents feel at ease coming into the setting.
Nursery
In Nursery as children begin their Read Write Inc Journey in April, staff hold an introduction to phonics workshop to inform parents of how children will be taught phonics and ideas for helping at home.
Reception
We hold an initial parent workshop in the autumn term, as early as possible, to discuss all things phonics and reading. We have a parent only section and then children join us for half an hour to carry out a rotation of activities we use in continuous provision that parent could also do at home. Parents have thoroughly enjoyed these sessions and have given very positive feedback
in the spring term we carry out a writing session for parents and then we are hoping to carry out a talk for writing session in summer term to tell parents all about this type of learning and then parents are aware as it is used within Key Stage 1 too.
Key Stage 1
In both Year 1 & Year 2, we hold autumn term workshops to explain to parents how Read Write Inc continues within each year group and how reading is taught.
We then hold spring workshops to show parents a Read Write Inc session taught in class and Year 1 hold a meeting regarding the Phonics check and how pupils can be further supported at home.
Class Book Areas
Reading at home