Intent
Learning to read is one of the most important skills children develop at our school. Because reading unlocks every area of the curriculum, we are committed to ensuring that every child—regardless of need, background or starting point—becomes a confident, fluent and enthusiastic reader.
We aim to build strong foundations in early reading and phonics, develop children’s oracy so they can talk confidently about texts, and ensure equal access to high‑quality reading experiences for all learners. Through a rich and inclusive reading curriculum, we want every child to:
- develop secure phonic knowledge and make rapid, sustained progress toward fluency
- read a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry with understanding and enjoyment
- build a broad vocabulary and use spoken language to deepen comprehension
- read confidently across the curriculum to support wider learning
- develop positive attitudes towards reading and choose to read regularly for pleasure
- grow culturally, emotionally, socially, intellectually and spiritually through the books they encounter
SEND / Pupil Premium / Higher Attainers
All children receive high‑quality, inclusive teaching. Those with SEND or eligible for pupil premium receive tailored support—such as targeted interventions, adapted texts or scaffolded tasks—to ensure they access the curriculum fully and make strong progress. Higher attainers are challenged through ambitious texts and deeper reading tasks that extend their thinking.
Implementation
We encourage children to see themselves as readers and to enjoy reading every day. Reading is taught explicitly and practised frequently through a wide range of activities designed to develop fluency, comprehension and oracy. These include:
- Targeted interventions, including one‑to‑one reading
- Weekly whole‑class Guided Reading, focused on vocabulary, inference, retrieval and discussion
- Whole‑class shared reading of high‑quality texts
- Class and group discussions, promoting oracy, reasoning and interpretation
- Independent reading, paired reading and comprehension tasks
- Daily story time, modelling expressive, fluent reading
- Visits to the school library to choose books to enjoy at home and school
- Access to well‑resourced class reading areas for reading for pleasure
Teaching of Reading
Across the school, adults model enthusiasm and a love of books. Reading is taught from Nursery to Year 6 through:
- high‑quality core texts in English lessons
- reading activities that develop deeper understanding and prepare children for written outcomes
- guided reading sessions planned to build decoding, fluency and comprehension
- reading across the curriculum to promote “reading to learn”
- frequent opportunities to hear stories, poems and information texts read aloud
School Library
All children visit the library weekly to borrow appealing, high‑quality texts. We encourage reading at home and promote reading as an enjoyable, shared experience.
Early Reading and Phonics: Little Wandle Letters and Sounds
We use the Letters and Sounds programme to teach phonics. All our reading books are fully decodable and follow the sequence of our phonic programme. We ensure that the books children read are carefully matched to the letter-sound correspondences they have learnt, enabling them to confidently apply their phonic knowledge.
Phonics is given high priority at our school, with daily phonics teaching in Early Years and in Key Stage 1. Children in our Nursery classes take part in small group phonics sessions which lead to proficiency in the discrimination between varieties of sounds, ensuring a positive start to their reading careers. Our phonics scheme is delivered using the Letters and Sounds approach, implemented using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds (Revised) – our chosen Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme. Children are routinely assessed on their ability to recognise graphemes (letters), to blend and segment phonemes (sounds), leading to development of skill in reading captions and sentences. We provide extra intervention where this needed through early identification of children who may need additional support.
Links to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds (Revised) Resource.
Reception Autumn 1 Phase 2 Sounds
Reception Autumn 2 Phase 2 Sounds
Reception Spring 1 Phase 3 Sounds
Impact
Our reading provision is carefully sequenced and adapted to meet the needs of all children. Regular assessments ensure that pupils read books at the right level, make good progress and continue to be challenged. Alongside this, we monitor the enjoyment of reading and promote regular reading for pleasure.
We measure impact through:
- phonics assessments and Phonics Screening outcomes
- benchmarking and book band assessment
- NFER scores
- Accelerated Reader reading ages and quizzes
- guided reading assessments
- termly summative assessments
- end of Key Stage SATs results
Systematic, consistent phonics teaching across the school means children build strong foundations in early reading. Ongoing staff training ensures approaches remain high‑quality and up‑to‑date. Children read more frequently, talk about books with increasing confidence and show clear improvements in comprehension.
