Eastgate Academy Reading Curriculum
Jackie Rutter
At Eastgate we believe it is important that all our children are given opportunities to explore the world and its culture through the doorway of books.
Eastgate Academy is committed to fostering a love of books and reading from your child’s first day with us. We create a reading culture that starts with reading books and text for pleasure and that ethos permeates through the school.
In EYFS, we share books with children daily to continue the work that parents start at home. We look at illustrations and encourage book talk from all the children. We read to the whole class and in groups looking at a range of stories from traditional tales to well established authors like Michael Rosen and Julia Donaldson. We love to read together and through this we develop the children’s concepts of print. We start looking at sounds in our environment and listening to different sounds that we can make with instruments, our bodies and a whole range of other items. We teach reading through ‘Sounds Write’ a phonetic programme which breaks down words into individual sounds so that we can read on our own and use synthetic phonics to develop our decoding skills. We share books together and model how to read a book changing voices through pitch and tone to make our reading more interesting.
In Key Stage One, we continue to build upon the work started in EYFS and develop children’s understanding of synthetic phonics basing lessons on the ‘Sounds Write’ programme. Daily phonics lessons help children to decode the language they encounter each day and, as the children get older, we move towards helping them to use their phonetic knowledge to develop spelling through investigating the English language.
We believe it is important that all our children are given opportunities to explore the world and its culture through the doorway of books. All of our writing units from EYFS to Y6 are rooted in a range of quality books which include contemporary, heritage, classical, and world texts which children explore and digest, so that they can be inspired to use these experiences in their own writing.
Reading books that are well-matched to individual ability are sent home regularly, and we ask that children read at home with their adults. Reading and the sharing of books at home helps early readers to practise their phonic skills but more importantly it opens up communication between child and adult. It is in this time that children acquire and understand new language, can explore new concepts and ask questions which develop thinking skills. Once a child has grasped how to read it is important that they continue to have these opportunities to read and explore concepts and knowledge that a book uniquely offers.
We celebrate World Book day each year and love dressing in crazy costumes to promote reading. We are also reintroducing book fairs which we hope will be well-supported by our fantastic parents who play such a big part in teaching their children to read. Please watch our calendar for upcoming dates.
By the time children leave us, we aim to have developed fluent readers who are not only well-equipped to read but use it as a gateway to help them achieve a happy and successful future.
Children’s thoughts on reading at Eastgate Academy:
‘I really like books. I like the design and the words. They make me happy.’
Tabitha EYFS
‘There are words inside and I like words and I like words. Books are also my favourite because they have pictures. My favourite book is called ‘Unlucky’ because it’s all about ‘u’.
Finley Y1
I like reading because you have different stories and adventures. You don’t know what it’s going to be about. I just like reading!
Aiden Y2
It’s interesting. My favourite books are non-fiction. I’ve learnt about Boudicca, Blackbeard and Cleopatra. It makes me feel happy and proud. When I read to myself it makes me feel calm.
Miya Y3
Reading is sometimes difficult for me but I still enjoy books. My favourite are books that we learn about in class like the Tinderbox. I like exciting adventure stories best.
Neidas Y4
It depends on the style of the book. I like funny stories and books about animals. It makes me feel relaxed and calm. It’s a place where I can escape into the book.
Lacey Y5
I enjoy reading and when I’m upset I just go to books. I mainly enjoy fiction because I like escaping into different worlds that are not reality.
Alissa Y6