Helping our children to become fluent readers is our priority, as it supports children's learning across the curriculum and is a vital skill that needs to be mastered to ensure that children become successful learners. 

Reading and understanding are the building blocks of learning and developing new skills and knowledge

In YR, Y1 and Y2 children benefit from regular small group guided reading sessions with an adult using the Big Cat Collins Reading Scheme, which links to our phonics scheme (Unlocking Letters and Sounds - 'ULS'). 

Our staff have undertaken initial training from Little Sutton English Hub, and then from 'ULS' and use the methods recommended to support our children to develop their early reading skills.  During their reading lessons, children will practice applying their phonics skills to decode and read words, practice their prosody and develop their comprehension skills by reading the same text a number of times.  The children will be allocated the same book that they are reading in school to practice their reading at home each day.  

Reading lessons will take place 3x each week (Monday - Wednesday) for 30 minutes. In YR and Y1, phonics is taught daily and then a reading session, incorporating phonics, occurs three times a week. Y2 will start the year using the phonics / guided reading approach and then move onto more regular, whole class reading lessons when the children are ready.

As a school, we are keen to promote a love of reading and we aim to ensure that reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We have selected 'core texts' to provide a breadth of authors who write in different styles and from a range of different perspectives across a range of different subjects.Through our reading curriculum, we aim to foster a life long love of reading whilst developing all of the necessary skills to become a fluent and inquisitive reader. We use books that have been recommended by the ‘Centre for Literacy in Primary Education’ (CLPE)  and from 'The Times' recommended reads for each age group linked to 'Booktrust' and 'National Literacy Trust' - this is for each year group, across the whole school, for whole class reading.   These websites and companies have a  reputation for the quality of their work. They promote high standards in the teaching of literacy and particularly emphasise the importance of books and literature in enabling children to become confident, happy and enthusiastic readers and writers.  

	Aut 1	Aut 2	Spr 1	Spr 2	Sum 1	Sum 2
YR
Y1
Y2
Y3
Y4
Y5
Y6

In our KS2 Reading lessons, we use the key texts and VIPERS to teach the 6 reading domains.  Our teachers meet regularly and share effective practice, using the EEF research on Improving Literacy in KS2 to inform our teaching of Reading.

What are Vipers?

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

VIPERS stands for

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequence or Summarise

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc.  As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions.  They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.

Reading to Learn

As well as ensuring all children have many opportunities for learning to read, we also ensure that all children have many opportunities to read to learn.  Our teachers try to incorporate opportunities for children to practice, use and further develop their reading skills across the curriculum to support their learning in other subjects.

Reading books and Reading logs

In school, we continue promoting a love of all things reading and we are really hopeful that parents and carers will continue to encourage their child to read regularly at home. We have home reading record books / reading logs to encourage parents to listen to their children read and write a comment about this as often as they can - we encourage children to read regularly at home.

In line with our Homework Policy, parents and carers are expected to ensure that their child reads regularly at home.

• Children in Reception and Year 1 are expected to read their reading book at least 3 times per week and complete their phonics activities.
• Children in Years 2 – 6 must read their book every day at home for around ten to twenty minutes, dependent on age.
• All KS2 children will bring a reading book home from school to practice their reading at home.

We ask parents and carers to record their child’s reading in their home reading log daily. The comments need to be purposeful for the class teacher. If their reading is good – a steady pace, varying tone and expression for different characters, good understanding of what they have read – then just an initial is acceptable. 

If the child has struggled, due to the text being too challenging or certain words or sounds causing problems, please write a short comment to explain this. Write the page number the child has read up to.

KS2 will be able to independently write the title and author of their book at the top of the ‘comment’ section.

YR and KS1 may need an adult - teacher or adult at home - to write the title and author for them.

Please note; all reading books and reading logs must be brought back to school each day so that children can read in their guided reading lesson in class. Forgetting or misplacing reading books has a detrimental impact on your own child’s learning and on other children’s learning as it disrupts our reading lessons in school.

To maintain the quality of education at our school, it is vital that all reading books remain in good condition. We expect children and their families to look after our reading books whilst they are at home.  Parents and carers will be asked to pay to replace any lost or damaged books or logs at a cost, depending on which book they have. It is imperative that the children in YR-Y2 bring in their book bag as this helps to preserve the condition of the reading books during transit to and from school, and it protects the book from inclement weather. It also helps the children ensure that books are kept separately from water bottles.

School Library

We are thrilled that we have a well stocked school library.  Each class visits at least every fortnight and children enjoy relaxing and reading books together.  The children can choose books to take back to their class to read and also to take home.