In Reception and Key Stage 1, children are taught to read through daily phonics lessons and we value reading as a key life skill.

We are dedicated to enabling our children to become confident readers who have a love for reading. We believe reading is key for academic success and so to ensure this we have a holistic approach to the teaching of reading. We expect that all children develop their reading both in school and at home.

Through reading, children have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables children both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.

Throughout a child’s learning journey at our school will are committed to provide the best possible education so that the children leave us being able to:

• Speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively.
• Read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live.
• Establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills.
• Have an understanding of spelling patterns, exception words and alternative spellings and be able to explain word meaning and clarify the meaning of unknown words. All children will learn the spelling rules of their appropriate year group together with year group spelling lists and be able to spell these words in a range of contexts.

Our Library

Our library is well stocked with a range of books and there are lots of opportunities for children to access this facility through:

• Use within a lesson
• After school library time    
• Small group sessions          

We also have School Librarians who look after and manage the books within our library.

Promoting of reading at our school by:

• Access to high quality books
• Displays around school and within the library
• Classroom reading areas
• Class books
• Rotation reading time
• Daily adult read

Reading at home

We encourage all children to read aloud to an adult and to share books at home regularly. It is an essential part of a child’s development and an important skill to read aloud, discuss books and develop a wider vocabulary. We work closely with parents and carers and feel it is a joint responsibility to develop children’s reading skills, therefore we expect every child to read several times a week to an adult at home and signing off comments should be regularly recorded in the reading log.

We welcome any parents/grandparents/carers in school who would like to volunteer with reading, both listening and discussing with individuals or small groups. Please let your child’s teacher know if you can give some of your time to help.