Sapphire
About Sapphire Band
Readers of the Sapphire book bands will be reading free-flowing, non-repetitive narratives, with more characters involved, and events sustained over several pages. They’ll read a wider range of texts with literary language and less familiar, more complex language.
How to support your child reading Sapphire Band books
Children on Sapphire book band are fluent readers who are able to skim and scan texts in order to locate specific information and research quickly an efficiently. They are now able to look closely at features of the texts and explain how the author has chosen words and phrases to create a desired impact on the reader.
You can support them by:
- Checking that the book makes sense to them, discussing their understanding and exploring the meaning of words in context
- Asking questions to improve their understanding
- Asking then to draw inferences such as inferring characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions, and justifying inferences with evidence
- Asking your child to predict what might happen from details stated and implied
- Supporting your child to summarise the main ideas drawn from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas
- Helping them to identifying how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning
- Supporting your child to distinguish between statements of fact and opinion
- Asking them to retrieve information from non-fiction text using the features
My Sapphire Band Reading Targets
- I can read most words fluently and attempt to decode any unfamiliar words with increasing speed and skill, recognising their meaning through contextual cues
- I can read most of the Year 5 and Year 6 exception words discussing the unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
- I can read a wide range of genres, identifying the characteristics of text types (such as the use of the first person in writing diaries and autobiographies) and differences between text types
- I can participate in discussions about books that are read to me and those I can read for myself, building on my own and others’ ideas and challenging views courteously.
- I can identify the main ideas drawn from more than one paragraph and
summarise these
- I can identify figurative language in a text and explain why the author has used it to impact the reader with increasing confidence
- I can recommend texts to my peers based on personal choices
- I can discuss vocabulary used by the author to create effect including figurative language
- I can evaluate the use of authors’ language and explain how it has created an impact on the reader
- I can draw inferences from characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives
- I can make predictions based on details stated and implied, justifying them in detail with evidence from the text
- I continually show an awareness of audience when reading out loud using intonation, tone, volume and action
- I can predict what might happen from details stated and implied
- I can distinguish between statements of fact and opinion
- I can retrieve, record and present information from non-fiction