Teaching and Learning

Reading

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Intent

At The Pines we enable all pupils to access a fun and exciting reading curriculum and aim to instil a love of reading for our learners. The curriculum is progressive and relevant to children’s interests and needs and carefully builds on the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding. At The Pines School we are passionate that all children develop their reading ability to the full, through sensory experiences, first-hand experiences in real life settings and through motivating and fun reading activities across a number of different contexts to enable our learners to generalise their skills.

Implementation

At The Pines, reading is taught daily within each year group in accordance with the National Curriculum. Outcomes are carefully differentiated to the needs and abilities of the learners. Every learner is given opportunities to practise their reading skills throughout the day and across the curriculum. We encourage reading for pleasure through regular access to classroom book corners, library visits and daily story/reading time.

For learners working below National Curriculum expectations, Reading is often sensory based and aims to develop learner’s awareness, engagement and functional reading skills to equip them for life after Pines. This is taught through Attention Autism, sensory explore and learn activities and key texts to ensure a broad coverage. Class staff provide a language rich environment to develop communication skills and to increase vocabulary learning. We provide our learners with opportunities to practice pre-phonic skills to enable them to make steps towards reading readiness. Learners are also given opportunities to explore and experience letter shapes and sounds to enable them to begin making connections. Our learners take part in 1:1 reading sessions to give them focussed experiences of handling books, exploring text and pictures.

For learners working at National Curriculum expectations, the curriculum is designed to raise standards but also to immerse our learners in a variety of poetry, performance and prose. The exposure to classic literature and a range of different genres offers them a rounded and exciting opportunity to develop their reading skills. A huge emphasis is placed upon learning and understanding new vocabulary to enhance skills in reading which is taught through Word Aware vocabulary sessions, shared reading, guided reading, 1:1 reading opportunities, reading comprehensions activities and phonic learning through Read, Write, Inc. Reading for both pathways builds upon skills that have been learnt in the previous year which is clearly shown on the English Knowledge Overview.

Impact

The successful approach to teaching reading at The Pines results in a fun, engaging, high-quality reading education, that provides learners with the skills and knowledge they need in later life. Our practical, creative and well-planned curriculum ensures that our pupils learn through a differentiated approach so all learners reach their full potential. Our learners have the option to achieve qualifications in KS4 to allow them to further their skills in collages, sixth form or apprenticeships. When our learners leave The Pines they will have the skills they need to enable them to access the community as independently as possible.