St Breock Primary School

Reading


Intent
Reading is a fundamental skill that plays a vital role in a child's development during primary school. It provides the foundation for learning across the curriculum and helps children develop language, communication, and comprehension skills. Through reading, pupils are introduced to new ideas, experiences, and perspectives, which support their academic achievement and personal growth. Encouraging a love of reading from an early age helps children become confident, independent learners and fosters a lifelong enjoyment of books and learning.

Aims

At St Breock, we aim for all pupils to:

  • Develop secure phonics knowledge and decoding skills to become fluent readers.
  • Read accurately, fluently and with appropriate expression.
  • Build a rich and varied vocabulary through exposure to high-quality texts.
  • Understand, interpret and discuss a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
  • Use reading strategies to retrieve, infer, predict, summarise and evaluate information.
  • Develop critical thinking skills by analysing authors' choices, themes and viewpoints.
  • Read widely to enhance their knowledge of the world and different cultures.
  • Foster a positive attitude towards reading and develop reading habits that continue beyond primary school.
  • Apply reading skills independently across the wider curriculum.
  • Leave primary education fully prepared for the reading demands of secondary school and lifelong learning
 
How do we teach reading?

We begin teaching the foundational skills for reading in the Early Years Foundation Stage where we focus on phonological awareness, rhyming, initial sounds and oral blending. We then move on to teaching systematic synthetic phonics using the Read, Write Inc. programme and continue this throughout Key Stage One. Once children reach the end of the programme, they then access the Read, Write Inc. reading comprehension units where they start to develop their comprehension skills. In Key Stage Two, reading lessons continue to be timetabled daily where children read a given text, analyse it and then answer comprehension questions about what they have read. We use the Grammarsaurus programme for our reading comprehension texts and alternate between these and novel study lessons where teachers use the core texts from our writing lessons as set out in our writing curriculum.

All classrooms have a dedicated and well-stocked Book Corner. Class teachers read carefully chosen texts to the class in daily storytimes and in Reception and Key Stage One, we also follow the Talk Through Stories programme from Read, Write Inc. In these daily sessions, carefully selected stories are read in a series of sessions. The focus is on new vocabulary and language as well as comprehension.

We have a well-stocked library where children in the Early Years and Key Stage One have timetabled access for borrowing a book to share with family at home in addition to their phonics book. Children who have completed the phonics programme choose a reading book from the library, starting from the Early Reader section working up to Free Choice. In addition, children take home a Reading Journal in which they write about the books they have chosen to read.