Journey to the River Sea

by Eva Ibbotson

Maia, an orphan, can't wait to reach her distant relatives a thousand miles up the Amazon. She imagines sharing great adventures with a loving family. Instead she finds two spiteful cousins who see the jungle as their enemy and refuse to go outdoors. But the wonders of the rainforest more than make up for the hideous twins and their parents. 

And when Maia meets a mysterious boy who lives alone on the wild river shores, she begins a spectacular journey to the heart of an extraordinary new world...

We all love to read in Sapling Class! Whenever we have a spare moment or break from our learning we are either listening to our core text read by Miss Mars or we are snuggled up somewhere in the room with a reading buddy,

whether that be a friend or teddy.

In Sapling Class we have access to a wide range of texts in school and it is great to see children reading their own books from home as well. In our reading corner, we have a Reading Tree for each year group that is filled with new and exciting reads aimed specifically at children aged 7-9. To encourage the children to read more throughout the school, each year group has their own Reading Tree Challenge where they have 50 books to read and tick off before the end of the year!

This list consists of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. 

For children that would like to read something different we also have various baskets filled with different types of books in our Bronze, Silver and Gold baskets. This provides the children with the opportunity to choose a book level that is best matched to their reading level whilst still allowing them to explore and try slightly more challenging books every now and then. 

It is crucial to your child’s development that they read at home at least every day. This can be independent but opportunities for your child to read to someone aloud is important, especially when we are still learning new words all the time and need some help pronouncing these! 

This year all the children in Sapling class will have a new reading record, these are slightly different to previous years as the  children only fill it in each time they finish a book as there are prompts inside to write a review. These will be checked regularly during the week by staff, to ensure that children are reading consistently and completing books within a reasonable amount of time.

In Sapling class we develop our reading skills through the use of reading VIPERS. 

VIPERS is an anagram to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions.