Reading at Wyvern Academy
At Wyvern we aim for:
- children to enjoy reading and be excited by stories and books
- children to develop reading skills that will enable them to be achieve greater independence in their lives
We encourage this through:
- the use of quality texts as the cornerstone of learning across the curriculum
- regular opportunities for children to engage with a range of reading contexts (independent reading, paired reading, group reading, storytelling, choosing and exploring books purely for enjoyment)
Regular opportunities are provided for children to experience stories in a variety of different ways, including:
- class made stories and books often featuring the pupils themselves as characters
- professional storytellers
- sensory stories
- interactive stories on the iPad or PC
- Bag Books (object-based interactive stories)
Creative curriculum enhancements add depth to the exploration of stories and texts, including:
- drama, music and art activities linked to class stories
- the teaching of synthetic phonics is provided for those pupils that respond best to this approach, specifically following the method outlined in Letters and Sounds (www.letters-and-sounds.com)
- the teaching of sight vocabulary for children who struggle with synthetics-based approaches to learning
A range of reading schemes are used in the academy to meet different pupils’ needs – Oxford Reading Tree for primary pupils and Wellington Square, Dandelion Launchers and Read, Write Inc. for secondary pupils.
Plans are in place to introduce the See and Learn suite of learning programmes to assist with reading.
As children progress through the school there is also an increasing emphasis on developing functional reading in order to enable them to develop greater independence when accessing the local community, culminating in the life-skills based curriculum in the sixth form.
