Steve Bladon, St James' Church of England Primary School, Lower Darwen
Why do we like ORT?I like the Oxford Reading Tree because the books are bright, interesting and appealing to young readers. There is real humour in the illustrations, and the language is concise, but not contrived. The stories about Kipper are stories about things which happen in our children's lives too. 'At School' reminds children of their own first school days, and later 'The Wobbly Tooth' is a story everyone can relate too. The Fireflies non-fiction books have transformed the reading experience for some of our children who weren't too interested in reading a story. These books are modern, with great content and genuinely interesting topics which appeal to boys and girls alike.
How does it work for us in our school?As their home reading scheme, pupils begin in Reception by taking home wordless story books about Kipper, Floppy, Biff and Chip. They play with finger puppets in class, read the Talking Stories in the ICT suite and later complete workbooks which develop skills of comprehension. By Year Six, pupils are still following the scheme, but they encounter a wide range of authors and text types with Treetops Fiction, Classics, Play-scripts and True Stories.
Which areas has it had the most impact?Reading has been a big area of focus on recent school development plans, and providing pupils with a high quality home reading scheme has been integral to our success. It was fantastic to see the change in pupils' attitudes as we gradually introduced the Oxford Reading Tree, and it is now a delight to spend time listening to pupils read and talk enthusiastically about what they have read!
Which strand of ORT do we like best?I personally think that the best strand is still the stories about Kipper and his family. We use these as the core of the reading scheme in the infant classes. Once we have got our youngest children passionate about the characters and their antics, we tend to branch out and supplement the stories with other strands which give pupils breadth of genre and content, as well as a diverse vocabulary. The Songbirds, written by Julia Donaldson have been a great recent addition. These stories follow the ORT stages but are different because they are fully CVC decodable. This has been a great resource in our class teaching, fitting in very well with daily 'Letters and Sounds' phonics sessions.
How long have we been using it?We've been using the Oxford Reading Tree for nearly four years now. When I arrived at the school there was a home reading scheme in place which was rather old and tired. I felt the children in Reception weren't as excited about reading as I would have expected, and I didn't particularly enjoy hearing them read! I had used the Oxford Reading Tree in my previous school, and I was confident that the Kipper stories would appeal to my lively new Reception class. A quick meeting with the local rep showed me that there were some great new genres available, including Glow-worms poetry books and Fireflies non-fiction books. A few weeks later and pupils in our infant classes were talking about Kipper, Biff, Chip and Floppy like they had known them for years!
Which year groups do we use it in?We use the Oxford Reading Tree as the home reading scheme right through school, from Reception to Year Six. We started by building up the scheme for Key Stage One, but colleagues in Key Stage Two soon decided they wanted it too! Pupils with SEN have responded very well to the scheme, and this is partly because the books are accessible without being patronizing.
