Reading

Pupils should be taught to:

• Develop an appreciation and love of reading, and read increasingly challenging material independently through:
• Reading a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including in particular whole books, short stories, poems and plays with a wide coverage of genres, historical periods, forms and authors, including high-quality works from English literature, both pre-1914 and contemporary, including prose, poetry and drama; Shakespeare (2 plays) and seminal world literature
• Choosing and reading books independently for challenge, interest and enjoyment
• Rereading books encountered earlier to increase familiarity with them and provide a basis for making comparisons
• Understand increasingly challenging texts through:
• Learning new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries
• Making inferences and referring to evidence in the text
• Knowing the purpose, audience for and context of the writing and drawing on this Knowledge to support comprehension
• Checking their understanding to make sure that what they have read makes sense read critically through:
• Knowing how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text Structure and organisational features, presents meaning
• Recognising a range of poetic conventions and understanding how these have been used
• Studying setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these
• Understanding how the work of dramatists is communicated effectively through performance and how alternative staging allows for different interpretations of a play
• Making critical comparisons across texts
• Studying a range of authors, including at least 2 authors in depth each year