Reading at Hingham Primary School  

You have already started the reading journey by sharing books and stories with them even before they could speak.

Once the children start school, we will be following the systematic phonics approach with Little Wandle Letters and Sounds.  Check out their parents page for support - LW For Parents

Reading skills

Through their reading groups with Little Wandle and through shared texts at school and at home, your children will show understanding of what they are reading - reading comprehension.

As children move through the school (Year 2 onwards) they start to use reading skills lessons to support the development of their understanding. They use the skills to analyse and unpick the text. 

Accelerated reader

As children's reading becomes more fluent, they are able to carry out an Accelerated Reader Star Test. This gives them a reading range. This allows them to choose a book from our huge collection that is in their range that will be suitable for them to read and understand. At the end of each book they do a quiz, checking their understanding. Teachers and teaching assistants can then check to see how they are going, how frequently they are reading and how successful they are in their understanding.

They repeat the Star Test regularly to ensure that we are checking their progress.

See the link below for their quizzes.

Reading during the school day

Children will have dedicated reading time every day. How this looks will depend on their age and stage. Younger children and early readers will have reading groups some days, share books with peers and hear a story read by adults daily.

As children progress through the school, children read independently in class time. They will also listen to adults read to them, share books with children across the school and participate in Reading Skills lessons.

The importance of daily reading is demonstrated by the facts below:

• Children who read books often at age 10 and more than once a week at age 16 gain higher results in maths, vocabulary and spelling tests at age 16 than those who read less regularly. (OECD 2010) ⁹
• Reading for pleasure is more important for children's cognitive development than their parents' level of education and is a more powerful factor in life achievement than socio-economic background. (Sullivan and Brown 2013)⁶
• Children with reading difficulties are at greater risk of developing mental health problems later in life, including depression, anxiety, behavioural problems, anger and aggression. (Boyes, Leitao, Claessen, Badcock and Nayton 2016)