Our Reading Spine Rationale:

At Thameside we teach children both how to learn to read and to read to learn. Learning to read focuses primarily on the phonics skills of the children and being able to decode and blend sounds to read. This also includes alien words and high frequency words. Reading to Learn focuses primarily upon the reading skills children require to read for pleasure and to develop subject knowledge.

Reading comprehension skills are taught explicitly in our daily shared reading lessons, in groups or whole class. We plan our English lessons around high quality core texts, which also link to the topics and themes for that term. 

We have identified two key anchor texts for every topic taught in a year group – one for whole class shared reading and one for English lessons. We have ensured our selected texts represent a wide range of diversity in both authors and protagonists and are engaging to encourage a love for reading. A diet of fiction and non-fiction is promoted within our Reading Spine.

We have researched many different reading spine templates and, on the recommendation of the local authority, we have based the Thameside Reading Spine on that of Mrs H https://twitter.com/Edu_MrsH  with consideration of the key principles from ‘Reading Reconsidered’ by Doug Lemov.

At Thameside, we continue to focus on making links across the curriculum through the topics studied and the books we read. 

Foundation Stage

We understand at Thameside that children thrive on repetition and by re-reading stories to children, teachers can deepen their familiarity with a story and increase their emotional engagement. Re-reading allows children to hear new vocabulary over again, which helps them commit the meaning of new words into their long-term memory. Additionally, children have new opportunities to connect with characters and their feelings, and to relive the excitement and emotion of stories.

As such, children in the Foundation Stage will re-read their class reader books 3 times over the course of a six week term to enable them to explore the language and emotions more deeply.