Reading

Intent

Children leave Barford St Peter’s a confident, fluent readers. They are exposed to a wealth of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction in every year group to develop their vocabulary and comprehension. We strive to encourage a genuine love for reading and an interest in a range of texts and authors. We work to inspire our children to become life-long readers with a curriculum that has reading at the heart. It underpins every subject area. As a result of this, children read widely and gain a rick knowledge or subjects across the curriculum. Our children read to empathise, they read to understand, and they read to explore different cultures, settings and communities unlike their own. Our teaching covers both word reading and comprehension to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, children are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

What Does Reading Look Like In Our School?

Implementation

Nursery, Reception and Year 1

We teach early reading through the systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. For more information about this, please visit our Early Reading and Phonics page.

Year 2

In year 2, most children move away from our SSP programme and become more fluent with their reading. Their phonic knowledge is improving rapidly, and children are able to sound out unfamiliar words accurately, automatically and without undue hesitation. Alongside this, pupils start to develop pleasure in reading. They have motivation, opinions and preference when reading. Children express their views through daily guided reading sessions. As part of these lessons, children read as individuals, as a group and in reading partners. They then answer comprehension questions on what they have read. Comprehension starts as a discussion and ends as a written response.

LKS2

In years 3 and 4, children begin to read accurately and at a speed that encourages understanding what they read, rather than decoding individual words. This is when children start to really develop their vocabulary and the breadth and depth of their reading. Children learn to read silently and are encouraged the justify their views about things they have read. This is done through daily guided reading sessions. These take a while class structure where all children focus on the same text. They discuss and delve into the mechanics of the writing as well as writing down their response with accuracy and detail.

UKS2

In year 5 and 6, children start to show a real preference towards genre and author whilst also reading widely and fluently. They read not just for pleasure, but also to gather information. Daily guided reading session take place with chapter books. As in the lower key stage, discussions are lengthy and in depth. These discussion are then transposed into comprehension answers that show an awareness of the reader and authorial intent.

All children take home reading books and reading records. Children are encouraged to read aloud in the younger years. This becomes a more independent task as children progress through the school.

Reading is celebrated at Barford St Peter’s throughout the year in a multitude of ways. Keep an eye out for our events throughout the year!

Please see below for useful resources:

50 Recommended Reads

Not sure what to read with your children?

Have a look at the lists below for some inspiration!