Our Curriculum is designed to enable our children to engage, innovate, develop and express through themed, termly imaginative learning projects encompassing meaningful key texts and book lists enabling a culture for a love of reading.  Students are presented with many opportunities to read a range of genres and text types throughout the day as part of their curriculum offer.

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At Cedars Academy, we follow the progressive ‘book band’ scheme alongside the National Curriculum. Book bands ensure that reading books are correctly matched to the phonological reading level of the individual. The teaching of reading is progressive throughout Academy and children are provided with a variety of ways to acquire knowledge to know more and remember more.

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As a specialist school, reading skills and knowledge across the curriculum is supported through approaches and thinking aligned to the learning characteristics associated with neurodiverse students and students with complex needs.

We aim to overcome barriers which can impact on the skills and knowledge that relate to reading.

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Therefore, our approaches addresses the characteristics of:

 

• Social communication difficulties (both receptive & expressive language that can impact on comprehension and inference skills)

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• Restricted or repetitive behaviours and interests (time for reading is included in individual students schedules and a wide variety of genres encouraged)

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• Sensory processing (difficulty filtering and modulating input - we provide quiet, distraction limited and inviting spaces to read)

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Learning characteristics of autism impacting on reading:

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• Difficulty with implicit teaching (individuals require explicit teaching of reading)

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• Attention

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• Executive functioning (explicit teaching of how to use and navigate books and other texts)

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• Theory of mind (teaching social thinking and the perspective of characters/others)

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Based on current research and theory the term ‘dyslexia’ as a specific learning difficulty can be used interchangeably with literacy difficulties (reading/spelling difficulties) at the word level. There are differences in the brain functioning of our neurodiverse students compared to their neurotypical peers. Some of our students will learn to read through the dual-route model, applying both phonological awareness and a memory store of whole words, recognised by sight.

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We recognise that some of our students may find the application of phonics difficult to master and the whole word route may be dominant for some students when learning to read.  For some students, the use of symbols to support whole word reading in the first instance is necessary.

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We offer pupils a well- balanced diet of literacy activities for reading:

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• Recognising that language development is vital to reading development and focus on vocabulary instruction

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• Ensuring that phonemic awareness and phonics are taught explicitly and systematically

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• ‘Word study’ approaches, particularly for those with literacy difficulties

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• Teaching sight-vocabulary (to the point of fluency and supported initially through symbols)

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• Modelling, teaching and practice of reading comprehension strategies

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• Meaningful reading and writing opportunities

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• Encouraging fluent reading through shared and independent reading

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• Ensuring that students have opportunities to read for pleasure in quiet, relaxing spaces

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• Making sure pupils are reading at the ‘Just-Right’ level

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• Ensuring access to a wide range of reading materials, across multiple genres

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Love of reading 

Pupils have access to a wide range of literature in our fiction and non-fiction reading areas in classes to enrich and broaden their experiences. We enhance the curriculum through the use of visiting story tellers, poets and theatre groups and provide opportunities for pupils to visit theatres.

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We also recognise the importance of hearing and engaging with high quality texts above the reading level of the students. Research has shown that this enables students to hear new vocabulary and experience a story in its entirety, allowing them opportunity to develop comprehension skills and engagement.  Therefore, all students will experience the adults in the class sharing a book with them on a daily basis.