All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Overhauling the way we taught reading had been on our school development plan for a long time, but other things became a priority and it kept on getting pushed further down the list. Discussions about whole-class reading can be muddied by terminology. Names for whole-class reading include ​ ‘Round Robin Reading’, ​ ‘Popcorn Reading’ and ​ ‘Control the Game’. The latter is advocated in Doug Lemov’s popular ​ ‘ Teach Like aChampion’ series and, most recently, his book ​ ‘ Reading Reconsidered’. urn:lcp:readingreconside0000lemo:epub:f2e6a5f1-e2d0-466c-bb1a-1a86008ee213 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier readingreconside0000lemo Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s25r3txmmnw Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781119104346 After spending time in classrooms and holding discussions with teachers, it was clear that we didn’t have a consistent whole-school approach to reading.

To fit our school’s context and our pupils needs, we adapted his suggestions, enabling us to include a more diverse range of text types. Reading Reconsidered provokes us into thinking in new ways about that most foundational of academic skills: making sense of the written word. The authors offer a fresh perspective on reading that is both intellectually stimulating and relentlessly practical."

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Good reading comprehension draws on linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and grammar, in particular) and knowledge of the world. It’s all very well saying that reading was on our school development plan, but what was it that we wanted to change? We knew why we had to have it as a focus, but needed a clear whole-school picture. But what texts would pupils read? We wanted to challenge our children so classic texts were an obvious choice, but when we set about designing a whole-school reading spine that teachers would use to select their class novel, we realised that most of the texts we’d considered were written by white British authors. In addition, we decided that reading lessons would be separate to literacy lessons, with word reading and comprehension taught in the former, and writing skills taught in the latter.

Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with teachers, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. Reading fiction and non-fiction Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Reading also feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious young minds. Redesigning our reading curriculum In the national curriculum, the programmes of study for reading at KS1 and 2 consist of two dimensions: word reading and comprehension (both listening and reading). We knew that the children in our school start significantly below where they should be in terms of speaking, listening and language development. Our end-of-KS2 results have been above the national average for many years and children were reading, so change didn’t seem urgent.We carried out a staff survey, asking questions about how often teachers read to their class and which text types they chose. We also surveyed pupils and asked then if they enjoyed reading, which types of texts they liked and if they read at home. Every day, each teacher would read to their class for 15 minutes without any interruptions – just simply modelling ‘how to read’. In KS2, we planned for reading to take place after break between 10.30am and 11.15am, followed by literacy until lunch at 12.15pm.