At Rosehill Infant School we believe that creating a life-long love of reading in our children is of paramount importance.  Each classroom has a reading area, children visit the school library once a week from where they can borrow a book to take home and they all have a reading book which is changed at least once a week. Four times a week there are guided reading sessions in class, two of which will involve children in a small group working with their teacher on a specific reading task whilst the other children enjoy reading for pleasure with independent follow up activities.

In Nursery and Reception, children are given the opportunity to explore books in small groups. This may involve books without words where the children are encouraged to tell the story, learn how to handle books, discover the directionality of print, look at and learn high frequency words and talk about familiar stories.

We assign home reading books from Reception upwards. Every child is also issued with a Home Reading Record Book. At Rosehill, we value and expect regular home reading.  Children should be reading every night; even if they can read fluently it is still important to spend time with them talking about their books and new vocabulary they have seen and to check their comprehension of what is happening in their book. Parents should also sign their diaries and comment if possible. Your support with this is very important. We monitor reading records on a daily and weekly basis and ask that reading bags are brought to school everyday.

We use a range of books from a variety of schemes which are banded by ability.  Many of these decodable texts come from Big Cat Collins, Letters and Sounds and Rhino Readers.  Here pupils become familiar with the characters and use phonetically decodable books to build their confidence and fluency. These books are levelled for difficulty and complexity using coloured book bands and match phased phonics. We ensure that children have access to language-rich texts, picture books and novels to help nurture and develop vocabulary and spark an interest in reading  (in line with their reading age).  

Don't forget joining your local library will give you access to many books and reading activities.  

Check out Oxford Owls where you can access and read many books online.

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/advice-for-parents/reading-at-home/

https://www.readingchest.co.uk/book-bands