At Bracken Hill, we want to foster a love of reading and stories, while ensuring our pupils gain this invaluable skill that they will need throughout each day of their lives. 

In the classroom 

 We encourage our pupils to read by letting them see us reading and providing opportunities to share books with them as a whole class, in small groups and 1:1.  We share stories in many different ways including using props and multi-sensory techniques as well as support from technology such as projectors and videos to reach all of our learners.  We look for opportunities to use stories and books across the curriculum to maximise the time that children and young people read outside of lessons. Additional reading takes place during registration times and end of the day during whole class stories. We also look for opportunities to read in the modern world, using technology and other real-life situations such as reading a cafe menu to make it relevant to them and their lives. 

Phonics 

In the classes where it is appropriate – particularly in the primary phase - the Bug Club phonics scheme is taught. Pupils are split into a range of groupings to ensure that they are taught at their appropriate phases. Each week we have a focus sound (or group of sounds depending on the phase) which we learn through the stages of reading, spelling and finally application in sentence writing. Each lesson begins with revisiting learned sounds and words, including common exception (tricky) words. The Bug Club interactive site provides an engaging introduction to our sound of the week and interactive games assess the children’s progress on a weekly basis. In addition, we complete thorough 1:1 assessments at the end of each term to inform future planning and to re-group as necessary. In the early stages of learning phonics, the children develop their listening and attention skills and begin to learn grapheme phoneme correspondences through game and matching activities.  

Reading strategies and interventions  

 We recognise that not every child learns to read through phonics, therefore we have introduced the ‘Whole Word Reading’ approach. For those classes that have surpassed the need of teaching phonics, and early reading skills, reading is taught through comprehension and inference skills of a wide range of texts. Trained staff members deliver daily 1:1 Switch On interventions to accelerate the learning of pupils that have been identified as needing extra support. Additionally, as a school we use Communicate and Print software as a way to support reading of words through the use of symbols where necessary. 

Reading for Everyone 

 A wide range of quality texts are available, including those targeted at beginner, catch-up and reluctant readers, plus age-appropriate texts for older pupils with lower reading skills. We use a colour banding system to ensure each child has the opportunity to access a range of books at their level. For pupils at a pre-reading level, we create our own symbolised books with pictures to develop their attention and engagement in reading. We ensure that different reading formats are available which include fact, fiction, comic books, magazines, newspapers, and picture books for early readers. 

We are happy to provide parents/carers with an appropriate book for their child and ways to encourage good reading habits at home. 

Reading Events 

 Each half term, each child has access to the mobile library service where they choose their own book that they keep in their classroom to access at appropriate times. Through this service, children are able to suggest the themes of book that interest them for the following visit. 

We have a calendar of reading events, including World Book Day and National Poetry Day to celebrate and enjoy reading. 

At Bracken Hill we believe that reading should not be limited to the the four walls of the classroom. To celebrate this we set a challenge across the school to both children and staff to find the most extreme places to read!

This section is inspired by 'Cbeebies Bedtime Stories'.

As a way to show our love of books, staff have selected a book to read and share with our children. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed reading.

Follow the link below to find our selection of stories.