Reading at Locking

Reading

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We recognise and value the importance of developing confident readers with a love of reading, in all its forms. We passionately believe in children hearing authors and illustrators talk about the craft of writing and illustrating and strive to provide as many opportunities as possible for this to happen, especially through visits to our school.

Staff enthusiasm for reading and knowledge of classic and current children’s literature is also a high priority. Beyond the English lesson, children are exposed to and immersed in a wide range of stories, poems and other texts through book events and story-time. Book corners celebrate our reading culture and offer a cosy book nook in each class. 

We are very excited to be creating a whole school library where children will be able to explore books and develop a passion for reading. We have appointed two Junior Librarians for each class who are currently responsible for maintaining the class library and will also support in the whole class library

When teaching reading, we use a phonics-first approach, with texts matched to each child's individual reading stage. Reading books for children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are banded by their phonics step to ensure the book is closely matched to the individual's development.

When children enter Year 3, we support the children in selecting their own book using ipick. The rationale for this is that we want to children to have ownership of their choice of book regarding subject, content and challenge. They will be guided in these decisions by the class team.

However, a child's joy of reading and books encompasses so much more than the ability to decode. 'Three ways to read a book' are modelled to our youngest children so that they are able to access and enjoy a wide range of beautiful picture books and immerse themselves in the magic of story-telling.

• Reading the pictures
• Reading the words (for phonetically decodable books only)
• Retelling a familiar story

For more information about phonics and reading at Locking, use the links below.

Library

We are very excited that we now have a school library. This a space designed so that children can immerse themselves in a book and develop a passion and love of reading.

The library is organised into the following sections:

• Fiction. These are labelled by author surname
• Picture books. 
• Non fiction. These are categories by pictures e.g a lion for books about animals. There is a key up in the library to help children find books of their choice.

• Reading Cloud

You can access the school library from home using this link. Your child will have a school bookmark with their username on it. At home they can browse the books so they can think about which book they might want to take out. Children will be visiting the library weekly and have an opportunity to take a book out. They can only take one book at a time and this must be returned before they can take another book.