At Tyndale Primary School, we prioritise developing an embedded culture which fosters a love of reading. Teaching a child to read is our primary focus alongside developing a love of reading in order to open the doors of learning which books offer. Reading has now become a core part of everyday life at Tyndale.

EYFS & KS1

Children are provided with a reading book for them to read at home, which is in line with their reading age and phonics level. This book must be brought into school daily so that it can be easily changed by the class teacher to effectively enable your child's reading progress.

Each day, we expect children in EYFS and KS1 to read for a minimum of 20 minutes and for this reading to be recorded in your child's reading record.  

KS2

Children are provided with a reading book for them to read at home, which is in line with their reading age. This book must be brought into school daily so that it can be easily changed by the class teacher to effectively enable your child's reading progress.

Each day, we expect children in KS2 to read for a minimum of 30 minutes and for this reading to be recorded in your child's planner (Years 2 - 6).

Reading Target Cards

Children are also provided with a reading target card in line with their reading age/level. This target card is inclusive of a list of criteria for children to achieve in order to accurately assess their understanding of the texts they are reading and to effectively enable their progress onto the next reading stage. Please inform the class teacher if you think your child has achieved one or more of the criteria on their card by recording this in their reading record or planner. 

Rewards and Incentives

There are a number of school incentives for reading such as 'Reading Rockstar' awards, termly trophies, class teacher and peer award recognition.

What Does the Research Say?

A growing number of studies show that promoting reading can have a major impact on children and adults and their future success. 

Research has found that children who love reading had:

• Higher scores on the cognitive and social/attitudinal competencies

• Consistently higher scores in mathematics, reading, logical problem-solving and attitude

• Higher average scores for engagement in school, positive communication and relations with family, and positive friendships

• Showed less risky behaviour

• Higher levels of motivation towards school.

Those who did not enjoy reading were more likely to be:

• Heavier television watchers over time

• Exposed to bullying experiences

• Seen by teachers as having difficult classroom behaviour at age 12

• Less likely to complete their homework

• Less likely to be enthusiastic about going to school.

(The Growing Independence: Summary of Key Findings from the Competent Learners at 14 Project report)

Reading Lists

Below, you can find our Tyndale Reading Spine which we strongly recommend to parents/carers when purchasing books for their children. We also hold a copy of each title in this list at school in our class libraries for children to select during reading for pleasure time. 

At Tyndale Primary, our mission is to give our children the best chance of success. In order to support our children in achieving this success, all children in Years 2 - 6 are given a planner, which is a compulsory item that they must bring to school with them every day. 

Preparing Our Children for Success

Teaching our children to use a planner is an effective way to prepare our children for their transition to secondary school, teach them to be professional and organised and to assist their ability to retain the knowledge they are taught at school.

Planner Usage

Children will use their planners every day during term time to record a variety of information:

Self Quizzing

Children will complete 5 self-quizzing questions per day, which will be a balance of new knowledge they've been taught at school that day and some questions targeting prior knowledge they've been taught for example knowledge they were taught yesterday, last week, last month, last term and last year. 

Reading Record

Children will record their daily reading in their planner so that they do not need to keep an additional reading record. Children are expected to read for a minimum of 30 minutes per day. 

More information about expectations of home reading can be found above.

Spelling Practice

Children in Years 1 - 6 will be provided with a termly overview of spellings that encourage the teaching of spelling rules. Therefore, we will not be giving a formal weekly test but would instead do a termly spelling test to occur in the final week of each term in order to assess understanding of introduced spelling rules. This is no more than 25 words in KS1. Within KS2 this can take the form of dictated sentences, that include multiple sentences for the words we would like to check retention and learning of. Children can still do their daily 'look, cover, write, check' in their planners.

Parent and Teacher Communication

At the bottom of each page in the child's planner there is an optional comments box to facilitate this line of communication. Please do not hesitate to use this facility within the planner or book an appointment to come in and see us if you ever have any concerns.

It is the responsibility of our children to bring the planner into school every day and to complete the daily tasks within it. Failure to do so, will result in study support with the senior leadership team during a lunchtime to complete the missing work. Children need to arrive to school on time, organised and prepared to start their day - every second counts.