Curriculum Vision

At Brackley C of E Junior School we have designed our curriculum with pupils learning and development at the heart. We are committed to providing a curriculum that is broad, balanced and offers opportunities to grow. It is the school’s curriculum vision that teachers strive for academic excellence and encourage every child to reach the highest levels of achievement and personal development. We recognise that every child is unique - therefore we are dedicated to providing a curriculum that is inclusive and meets the needs of every pupil by supporting them in becoming the best they can be, regardless of their background, special needs, ethnicity or disability. We strive to create a friendly, caring atmosphere which is designed to help every child flourish and realise their full potential. The school staff value the different ways in which pupils learn and plan lessons to account for these differences. Through our curriculum we aim for all pupils to be prepared to live life in all its fullness. We want them to be aspirational for their future and recognise that through valuing and participating fully in their education, everyone has a place and can contribute to the wider community.

Reading Intent

At Brackley C of E Junior School, it is our intention to create a positive reading culture by providing a curriculum that is broad, meaningful and enjoyable to enable us to equip our pupils with a lifelong love of books.  As a junior school, it is our intention to further develop the pupils’ early reading and phonics skills which were acquired during their infant years and support our children in becoming fluent, confident and enthusiastic readers, who are readily able to access and enjoy a rich variety of texts and genres. Our goal is to make reading the heart of daily life at Brackley C of E Junior School with books being shared, celebrated and promoted as an integral part of our school day; through daily guided reading, shared reading, paired reading and reading for pleasure along with our direct teaching of reading through our book based English units.

It is our intention for every pupil to leave KS2 with a love for reading, an ability to read for meaning and for purpose and for them to have acquired the necessary skills for decoding and comprehension of a wide variety of text types. We intend for our readers to have gained confidence, fluency and pleasure from our reading curriculum, for them to have acquired a rich vocabulary and be able to express their opinions and views of literature. Reading is prioritised at Brackley C of E Junior school to allow our pupils to access the full curriculum offer and we plan that through our rigorous, sequential approach to the reading curriculum the pupils will develop fluency, confidence and enjoyment in books, for life.

Reading Implementation

At Brackley C of E Junior School, we deliver a rich, varied and meaningful reading curriculum. Our reading curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning. We have adapted, designed and developed our reading curriculum to be ambitious and to meet the needs of all pupils.

Guided Reading

We deliver daily guided reading sessions utilising a variety resources. These support our ethos for developing a love for reading and assist our pupils in developing a deep understanding of different text types through engaging tasks. Headstart resources are used for up to three sessions per week, in addition to high quality texts from the Literacy Shed. Teachers focus on the fluency of reading, modelling how to use expression and pace when reading out aloud before teaching comprehension skills.  VIPERS questions are written for each Headstart chapter/text to further develop children’s comprehension of different text types and skills. They are vocabulary, inference, prediction, explaining, retrieval and sequencing and summarising. Teachers model how to answer each question type giving the children the skills to be able to confidently decode a variety of text types. In addition to this, adults support all pupils during to develop their reading and comprehensions skills through small group work. Adult supported paired reading is also carried out along with opportunities for children to read with a peer regularly.

Accelerated Reader/Star Reader

The books the children read both in school and at home, from our extensive school library, are levelled according to the Accelerated Reader system. On entry to BJS, the children take the star reader test which determines their ZPD. The children work through the system, regularly taking quizzes on the books they read before moving to the next level after 4 passes. This is closely monitored by class teachers along with the subject leader as a whole school monitoring role. Star reader tests are taken 3 times per year. To ensure their validity, we also complete PIRA tests twice a year alongside and compare the standardised scores carefully along with reading ages.

Additional support for those children identified as requiring intervention or ‘on watch’ is actioned as a result of these assessments. For those children who are unable to access the Star Reader programme, the Early Star Reader package has been allocated which allows us to monitor early reading progress.

LSAs choose the AR book that each child reads in class during quiet reading sessions. This is to ensure a broad variety of genres and authors are experienced. Quizzes are taken on completion of the text.

Each class has a word count target and every week teachers share the class progress towards meeting this. The target is increased if accelerated progress has been made to continue the children’s strive for success. Some classes have other motivating reading challenges such as ‘Reading Ambassadors’ displays or ‘Reader of the Week’. Each class has their own system for celebrating reading whether that be for word count, number of tests passed, guided reading or test progress for example.

‘Reading for pleasure’

Children decide as a class, via vote or discussions, which text to share together as a class reader. Teachers read to the whole class allowing the children time to enjoy having a class book read to them.

Reading interventions

For those children working below ARE, or for those identified through formal assessments as requiring additional support, 1 to 1 reads are carried out frequently. Phonics sessions are delivered daily to those identified as needing early reading support. The intervention lists and timetables are monitored termly in order to provide timely support following data capture points.

World Book Day

Every year, we celebrate World Book Day at BJS by dressing up, sharing books, completing book-related activities and quizzes. The day is always a highlight of the year for the children, and they particularly enjoy sharing books with other children and finding out about their favourite authors. Other activities include ‘the big book exchange’, live sessions with authors, visit to the local book shop to ‘spend’ their token.

All of our reading texts are selected to support the intent of our coherently planned reading curriculum. Our progressive reading scheme, RWI phonics programme (used primarily as an intervention) paired reading, guided reading, accelerated reader, and reading for pleasure all combine to create our rich and varied reading curriculum building fluency, comprehension, confidence and delight in reading.