Reading at Hayfield Cross

At Hayfield Cross, we aim to instil a love of reading in every one of our children. By balancing learning to read alongside building an enjoyment of books and other texts, we believe it builds lifelong, confident, and independent readers, and is key for academic success.

Our banding system follows Little Wandle Letter and Sounds and Collins Big Cat. Within school, children have the opportunity to change their books weekly, where they are encouraged to select their own book. Teachers will regularly assess the children to ensure they are reading at the appropriate level; this is done by assessing children on their phonics understanding, fluency, and comprehension.

Children should read as much as they can, across a wide range of genres including non-fiction texts, poetry, and comics. At home, children are encouraged to read every day and must have this signed by an adult. Our older readers, in Upper Key Stage 2 (year 5 and 6), do not need to have their diaries signed by an adult and we are also happy for them to write their own diary entries. Each week, their reads will be counted and rewarded house points! Alongside this, there is allocated time for children to share a class book (read to them by their teacher) and time for them to engage in reading texts of their own preference every day.

Whilst only diary entries relating to their school book will count towards the house points (to ensure children progress through the reading scheme), we also encourage children to enjoy reading for pleasure! Whether it is a book from home or the library, a magazine, newspaper or e-reader, staff will be more than happy to read any comments recorded about books from home or libraries!

Within school, we use Complete Comprehension to support their fluency and comprehension with reading. As per the National Curriculum, reading focuses on both word reading and comprehension. By using Complete Comprehension, children can build on skills required to answer comprehension questions, alongside continuing to support their reading of a variety of texts and foster a love of reading. Complete Comprehension supports the retention and recall of the reading content domains as put forward in the National Curriculum. It therefore enables us to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these, which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.

Book Bands

Hayfield Cross has a wide range of books from lots of different providers. Our banding follows the Little Wandle/Collins Big Cat system.

Children in Early Years and KS1 will be allocated a Little Wandle school reading book, which they will have already read during guided reading sessions. These books are organised into phases and sets within each phase.

In Early Years, children will start with wordless books and progress through Phases 2, 3 and 4. In KS1, children will continue their progression from Phase 4 to the final stage, Phase 5.

The Little Wandle books focus on developing your child’s individual phonics skills and provide an opportunity for your child to consolidate the sounds and words they have been learning in phonics that week. It is vital that your child reads this book daily at home.

Reading a book at the right level means that your child should: know all the sounds and tricky words in their phonics book; read many of the words through silent blending (in their head); and only need to stop and sound out about 5% of the words by the time they bring their book home—while being able to do this independently.

Children in KS2 will be assessed on their reading fluency and comprehension and will be allocated an appropriate colour band. They are encouraged to choose their own books from within their allocated band. This means they may choose the same book more than once; this is encouraged, as it promotes a love of reading while also improving comprehension. To move up to the next book band, children will be reassessed on their fluency and comprehension.

Once children have progressed through all the book band levels and completed Pearl, they become free readers. This means they can choose books independently, although their teacher will guide them towards age-appropriate selections if needed.

Reading for understanding

Below, you will find documents that you can download. The two titled question stems contain prompts to help you develop your child as a reader and replicate what we use in school. In class, the children use the icons on these documents to help them remember the different reading content domains and how to answer comprehension questions. When reading with your child, use these question stems to further their reading and develop their comprehension skills. 

Reading for pleasure

We want our children to have a love of reading and have developed our library to be as functional and inviting as possible. In addition, each classroom has a dedicated reading area shared reading areas where staff share a variety of non-fiction, poetry, and fiction texts from a collection of well-known, new, and diverse authors. We enjoy meeting authors and recently welcomed award-winning author, Ben Davis, into school, whilst also working with best-selling, World Book Day author, Jennifer Killick, to develop our writing.

Below, you will find recommended a reading lists for each school year to help guide you in supporting your child's reading. These have been produced by the education website, booksfortopics.com.

Reading for pleasure

Our Reading Leadership Team deliver a phonics workshop to Year 1 parents to provide information about the phonics learning the children will be completing and to provide information about the Phonic Screening Check that happens in June each year. We are also hosting Classroom Connections. This will include periodical opportunities for parents to come into school and share a story with their child. Information about the dates and times of these will be released on Class Dojo and via Parent Mail.