Reading Intent – What are we trying to achieve in our curriculum?

At St. Margaret Clitherow’s Catholic Primary School, we strive to foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing children to a varied and rich variety of texts across all curriculum areas. We believe that reading is such an important life skill; opening up other ways to learn, allowing children to escape into another world, igniting their imagination and creating a sense of wonder. Reading accurately, fluently and with understanding not only acts as a gateway to allow children to access and increase progress in the wider curriculum, but it is also a hugely important life-skill which will support them through secondary school and into adulthood. We aim to instil a passion for reading, so that children become enthusiastic and motivated readers, reading for pleasure as well as knowledge. 

Reading for pleasure is a vital part of every child’s educational entitlement. Developing a love of reading has huge benefits for children, contributing to pupils’ educational achievement across the curriculum in addition to providing a lifetime of enjoyment. With so much competition for children’s time and attention, it is vital that we embed a culture of reading into the core of what we do as a school, helping every child to become a lifelong reader. 

Reading Implementation – How is our curriculum delivered?

Reading is a vital skill that will support learning across the whole curriculum, therefore great important is placed upon teaching children to read with fluency, accuracy and understanding at SMC through discreet reading teaching, as well as a variety of cross-curricular learning opportunities. 

Early Years Foundation Stage

The curriculum in EYFS offers many opportunities to develop the skills required for reading. Pre-reading skills, such as speaking, listening and understanding language, are the first skills to be focused upon through specific communication and language teaching. 

In Nursery, as the children progress with their pre-reading skills, they begin working on RWI set 1 sounds in a fun and play orientated way.

As the children enter Reception, they all begin daily formal RWI teaching. However, phonics teaching continues throughout the entire day, with different activities and games to develop their phonological awareness. 

Key Stage 1

Children in Key Stage 1 who are learning to decode and fluently receive daily phonics sessions for 35 minutes. Children are assessed every half-term to ensure maximum progress is achieved through carefully and accurately grouping the children. 

Once children have demonstrated an ability to decode accurately and fluently , using all graphemes taught within the Read, Write Inc. programme, they are able to  further develop their reading skills within reading lessons using age-appropriate texts. See below (Key Stage 2 reading) for further information on the structure of these lessons.

Key Stage 2

Once children can read with appropriate fluency, they participate in whole-class reading teaching each morning. 

Children are introduced to a wide range of literature and non-fiction. Through modelling and explicit instruction, children are guided to progressively build fluency as they are introduced to and re-read texts that include new vocabulary and language structures. Examples of fluency-building strategies include:

~ Teacher modelling how they plan to read aloud a text, showing how they decide the best words to emphasise, the pace, the voices, pauses and how they use punctuation to help them. 

~ Opportunities for pupils to practise doing the same, by asking them to read aloud with a partner.

~ Echo reading, where the teacher reads a text aloud sentence by sentence or line by line and pupils echo the teacher’s reading, copying its pace, intonation and emphasis.

~ Choral reading where pupils can be allotted different lines to practise reading together.  

~ Re-reading extracts before moving on within a text to allow pupils to increase the number of words they read automatically and accurately, with their intonation reflecting their improving understanding. 

Finally, carefully constructed questions facilitate pupils to think deeply and discuss a range of rich and challenging texts, using a variety of reading skills in order to wholly comprehend. 

Reading Intervention

Through regular teacher assessment, we quickly identify pupils who need support in decoding, fluent word reading or both. For those pupils who still require decoding support, tailored intervention is provided through Fast Track Tutoring (RWI).

For those pupils who require support to develop fluency, in order to comprehend, they receive small-group intervention. Prior to whole-class reading, children are pre-taught unfamiliar words. Fluency building strategies are used in this intervention to help build automaticity in word recognition with the given text. This small group pre-reading strategy, which facilitates re-reading of texts within teaching lessons, allows struggling readers to access age-appropriate texts with increasing fluency and vocabulary retention.

Reading for Pleasure

At SMC, we strive to provide a stimulating, print-rich environment where reading materials are presented in a way that is inviting and inspires children to explore stories and engaging books. We recognise the importance of ‘story time’  and ‘book talk’ throughout the entire school. 

Teachers are influencers of reading, promoting discussion, anticipation and recommendations for books, from them or from children. A personal ‘I think you’ll love this book’ goes a long way. Also, multiple copies of popular books are made available to the children and sometimes ‘waiting lists’ are used to promote excitement and anticipation for reading.

Our ‘SMC Reading Bus’ is a special area, set apart from the classrooms, which the children enjoy visiting as it is quiet, comfortable and free from interruptions. During class visits to the bus, pupils may share in a class novel, or be given time to explore the range of texts on the bus and read extracts or whole texts independently, regardless of whether they chose to do this at home. Our Reading Bus is also open during lunchtime for children to escape into a book, enjoying peace and tranquillity. 

‘Read Together’ boxes are a key part of every classroom. These are a selection of varied and diverse books which children can take home to enjoy reading at home. Parents are encouraged to share time with their children to read these books, especially when a child chooses to read a book which interests them, but may be beyond their reading level.

Reading Impact

At St Margaret Clitherow’s, we strive to create a positive and enriching reading culture from an early age, where children learn to respect, value and love books. We endeavour for all children to achieve their full potential, preparing them to enter the world as articulate and literate individuals with a strong love of reading. The core purpose of our reading curriculum is not only to prepare children for life beyond primary school, but also to open up the world of possibilities which reading can offer them throughout their lives.

Miss McCarthy ~ Reading Lead