Reading for Pleasure in the new National Curriculum- June conference

Did you know how important it is going to be to have reading for pleasure as part of your curriculum?

“Pupils should be taught to read fluently, understand extended prose (both fiction and non-fiction) and be encouraged to read for pleasure. Schools should do everything to promote wider reading. They should provide library facilities and set ambitious expectations for reading at home. “

The New Curriculum, which comes into force in September this year for all but Years 2 and 6 (they will need to follow it from next year), starts the reading framework with the above paragraph.  From Year 1 the statutory requirements clearly state that children should be reading for pleasure. Most teachers already know this and make it an essential part of their teaching- there is rarely anything entirely new!

Reading for pleasure is of course, something we all wish for the children we teach and so is a welcome development that will hopefully have real and lasting impact on the children currently in primary school.  Studies have found that reading for pleasure is more important to a child's educational achievement than their family's wealth or social class, which is certainly something to stop and make you think. If it has that much power it ought to be the focus of everything we do.  Yet until this move for a new curriculum it has never been a focus of much attention in many schools as it does not appear in any SATs scores or league tables. But taking it to the logical conclusion, if you get the reading for pleasure bit right, you are improving those scores as children do better when they are children who read for pleasure.

So how do you encourage reading for pleasure? And how do you measure progress in reading for pleasure? (No wonder there is very little assessment guidance available!)  Of course we all want the children we teach to be reading for pleasure, but how can you actually make it happen? What resources might you need and what might you need to change in your current curriculum to promote a love of books and make it central to all that you do?

On 11th June there will be a whole day conference in Enfield, North London, which will begin to explore some of these issues. With guest speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, the day aims to motivate you to come to grips with the reading for pleasure aspect of the New Curriculum.

The author Joe Craig will be running one of the sessions. Joe has written many books around the character Jimmy Coates and is not only a great speaker, he is one of those authors boys love to read. Also attending will be Margaret Bright from Enfield Schools Library Service, to talk about, among other things, the summer Library Reading Challenge and the new Reading for Pleasure library boxes. Ruth Fairclough from Bookstart will be doing a session, as will Gina Menon from Raynham Primary, to talk about the wonderful  library they have at the school.  In addition there will be sessions on the background and research into the impact of reading for pleasure and how you can incorporate it into the life of the school.

This day promises to be an exciting one and not one to be missed. Book your place now as spaces are limited and will be given on a strictly first come first served basis.

Contact jacqueline.harris@hotmail.co.uk to book your place now.

 

Helpful hints for phonics decoding check

The week of 16th June 2014 is the third annual decoding check for Year 1 children and resits for Year 2 children who either failed the test or did not take it last year. Despite the proximity of the week, there are still things you can do to prepare children at this stage.

· In the couple of weeks leading up to the check, go over particular graphemes again. The analysis of the last couple of years show the most mistakes were on split digraph and the Phase 3 /oi/  grapheme. This was regardless of whether they were real or pseudo words. Further analysis has shown that unless the pseudo words were too similar to real words as in the first year (remember ‘strom’ and ‘frist’) or unless they had bizarre spellings (‘quorg’ and ‘quigh’) children were equally able to read real or pseudo words. So don’t worry about pseudo words, concentrate on the graphemes and use www.phonicsplay to encourage decoding skills.

· Do as much reading with children as you can. Expose them to opportunities where they have to decode and read for meaning. Whilst it is still true that some really good readers, who are almost past the stage of needing to decode, do find the check particularly challenging, with a real focus on decoding unfamiliar words, those children should not have problems with the check. They do however need reminding to carefully use their phonics rather than quickly glancing at a word.

· This year the pass mark will not be made available till after the results have been sent in. This is because in previous years statistical analysis has shown the very unlikely event; that there was a spike in the number of children who just managed the pass mark. The insinuation is that teachers were ‘helping’ children to pass and so the pass mark will be delayed, only being made available on Monday 30th June. Whether this has a big impact on the national and local data remains to be seen….

Whilst OFSTED do have a huge focus on the phonics and the decoding check data, it is important to remember that there will be some children who are just not at that point yet. So long as it is a handful of children and not half a class, that is perfectly acceptable. OFSTED always look at what you are doing to support those children who are underachieving rather than expecting every single child to be at the same level.

Finally– don’t panic– phonics is a tool for learning to read rather than the end result– we want readers and not just decoders in our schools.