How do we teach reading at Great Bentley?

Individual reading in school

At Great Bentley Primary School, all children will read with an adult at least once a week (EYFS & KS1) and fortnightly in KS2 in school to develop their fluency. They will read a book from the school’s reading scheme or a banded ‘Bug Club’ book, appropriate to their ability, with either a physical copy or on a school iPad. 

Some of our children may receive more support in reading, some reading every day and some reading at least two times a week if they are working below age-related expectations. Our class teachers monitor each child’s progress carefully and children will move up book bands following a combination of evidence from reading skills lessons, reading assessments and your child’s improving fluency.

Our staff will initial in your child’s planner to inform you of when your child has read in class. We also provide more specific information about your child’s reading at regular parents’ meetings across the year. If you have any concerns about your child’s reading please don’t hesitate to make an appointment with your child’s teacher using the school office or by emailing your child’s class email address.

Picture books and phonic sounds

To help our emergent readers, we start with picture books to engage children in the joy of reading and to develop story language skills.

In class, we work from our own Phonics Scheme of Work in line with Bug Club, to develop children's initial reading; listening to sounds, rhyming (in songs) and clapping syllables through to learning the specific letter sounds that help build words.

When reading books, questioning children on what is happening and using the pictures as clues as to what the words might be saying, all these strategies help develop reading further and provide children with further reading 'tools' that they can then independently use when reading.

See the 'Phonics' tab under 'Curriculum' then 'Phonics' for further information.

Coloured book banded books

As children progress with their phonic knowledge they move on to our coloured book band system to improve their fluency. Once they reach the end of our book band system they are a 'free reader' with a wealth of books available in our school library for all abilities, ages and interests. Our coloured book bands are:

Band 7 - Turquoise 

Band 8 - Purple

Band 9 - Gold

Band 10 - White

Band 11 - Lime

Band 12 - Copper

Band 13 - Topaz

Band 14 - Ruby

Band 15 - Emerald

Band 16 - Sapphire

Band 17 - Diamond

Band 18 - Pearl

FREE READER

Whole class reading skills lessons - Reading VIPERS

Our reading skills lessons take place explicitly once a week in KS2 reading hour lessons and daily in EYFS/KS1 through guided reading. Within these sessions our teachers model reading strategies during shared whole class reading sessions. These involve high quality, age-appropriate texts which are carefully selected by our staff. These are read to or with the children and provide an opportunity to teach children specific reading skills to widen their vocabulary and develop their levels of comprehension, as outlined in the National Curriculum. Questions are planned by teachers in advance to help children access a range of skills to help them to develop a greater understanding of a range of reading materials including fiction, non-fiction and poetry materials.

In our reading lessons, we use reading VIPERS to help support our pupils to understand what a good reader looks like and how to approach answering reading questions.

VIPERS is an acronym which stands for:

Vocabulary

Infer

Predict

Explain

Retrieve

Sequence (KS1) or Summarise (KS2).

All children work on VIPERS during class reading whether this is reading as a class, in a small group or one to one with an adult. We encourage children to orally talk through their answers before formally recording their answers. Children do this in a variety of ways such as discussing the answer first with their peers and/or an adult and then writing their best answer.

VIPERS question stems

It would be excellent if, as parents, you could also refer to these VIPERS regularly when you are listening to your child read at home. VIPERS questions can be applied to any text that a child is reading as well as with pictures, picture books and films! When any adult is listening to a child read, all they have to do is think of questions about the book, picture or film that cover some of the VIPERS and there are some great examples below of how you can create your own questions using the following question openers. If you have any questions or are struggling with this, please contact your child’s class teacher and they will provide some additional support materials to use at home.