The Badger Hill Reading Spine

Reading is a key life skill. It is at the heart of our curriculum at Badger Hill and we have carefully selected class texts that will ignite children’s imagination, inspire their curiosity and open up windows into other worlds. We want children at Badger Hill to develop a life-long love of reading, so at school, every child will have the opportunity to read regularly for pleasure, exploring a range of books and genres through their whole-class reading books, guided reading lessons and individual reading books that can be taken home and shared.

Aims

For children to:

  • develop a love of reading
  • become fluent readers 
  • have a varied reading diet
  • read for a range of purposes

Our reading curriculum is designed to support children in developing the following skills:

  • decoding words
  • fluency
  • comprehension

Early Reading & Phonics

At Badger Hill, we follow the Little Wandle (Letters and Sounds revised) phonics programme. Phonics is taught daily from Reception to Year 2 and beyond for those who might still require support in decoding words and developing their fluency. Little Wandle draws on the latest research into how children learn best; how to ensure learning stays in children’s long term memory and how best to enable children to apply their learning to become highly competent readers. The children’s progress in reading is carefully monitored and every child will have access to fully decodable books that they can take home and share with parents and carers, allowing them to become part of their child’s journey to being a confident, fluent reader.

Reading from Years 2 – 6

At Badger Hill, we use the anagram VIPERS to help children recall the 6 reading domains that form the ‘comprehension’ component of the National Curriculum: vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summary. From Year 2 onwards, children will be taught to apply these skills across a broad range of texts through a variety of activities, including whole-class discussions and debates, paired work and independent tasks. Children will continue to develop their fluency and for those who require it, phonics and will continue to be taught.

Our reading curriculum is designed in such a way that skills are revisited and built upon year after year, so that all children become fluent, confident readers by the time they reach secondary school.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Reading focus Discussions around vocabulary, retrieval and explanation questions will form the backbone of the lesson.

VIPERS Skills

vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarise and sequence

 Discussions (whole-class or partner talk) will be focussed on inferring, prediction, explaining and summarising.
Text focus Class Novel Text linked by theme/genre Class Novel
Notes Lessons may begin with a summary of the text so far and an opportunity to read ahead before focusing on a VIPERS skill. Children to read extracts from a wide range of texts, spanning different genres. Texts may be linked by a common theme or be from a similar genre. They may even have been written by the same author. Sometimes a longer extract may be chosen and read across the three days. Lessons are skills based with ample opportunity given for children to practise and apply taught skills based on a familiar text through discussion, individual thinking, partner talk and solo work.

Year 6 Reading Progression

Year 5 Reading Progression

Year 4 Reading Progression

Year 3 Reading Progression

Year 2 Reading Progression

Year 1 Reading Progression

At Badger Hill, we teach early reading using the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ scheme. This is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme which draws on the latest research into how children learn best and ensures that learning stays in children’s long-term memory.

We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle progression framework which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell. We aim for all children to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible. Children continue to learn phonics throughout Year One and then into Year Two and then until children are fluent, confident readers.

We teach a rapid progression of grapheme-phoneme correspondence and tricky words that we teach term-by-term. The progression has been organised so that children are taught from the simple to more complex, as well as taking into account the frequency of their occurrence in the most commonly encountered words. All the graphemes taught are practised in words, sentences, and later on, in fully decodable books. Children revisit and revise these words daily, weekly and termly in order for them to stick in their long-term memory.

Although your child will be taught to read at school, you can have a huge impact on their reading journey by continuing their practice at home. Each week, your child will bring home a new reading book. This book has been carefully matched to your child’s current reading level. You can support your child by listening to them read regularly at home and asking them questions about the book.

Please look at The Little Wandle Website for more information:

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/