Our Aim

We aspire to support our children to become confident readers with a love of books. We believe that this can be best achieved through reading widely and reading ambitiously. ‘Book Talk’ supports understanding and helps to develop a language rich culture in the school.

Teaching & learning

Each teacher reads daily to their whole class. These sessions help children get enthralled in a story which can have a higher complexity than one they would read to themselves. They can share discussion with their peers and learn from the teacher modelling expressive and fluent reading while demonstrating their own love of books. 

We teach early reading through a phonics scheme called Read Write Inc (RWI). Other reading skills (skimming, scanning, inference etc) are taught in a progressive and carefully planned way throughout the school. In KS1, we use the RWI reading scheme: this is taught through guided reading sessions where children read in a group supported by the teacher. In KS2, reading is taught through some guided reading sessions and also whole class teaching.

We organise a range of activities designed to promote an interest and love of reading: an annual celebration of World Book Day; a book fair in school selling books; visits to hear authors discuss their books; sharing stories with ‘buddies’ in other classes and many practical and fun book-based events.

We have an active PTA who has developed a working library which is incredibly well stocked with a wide range of books: this is used by every class each week.  The book selection in the library changes each term to link to the topics classes are studying. In addition, each class has an attractive reading environment where books can be shared and enjoyed. We are very fortunate to have a wealth of books on display in each room.

Equality of opportunity

Our books are carefully chosen to make sure that they represent diversity and give children a broad experience of subjects which embrace differences in gender, disabilities, age, social, and economic backgrounds.

Some children find reading more challenging and we provide additional support in a variety of ways, most notably through specific reading interventions run by trained teaching assistants, volunteer readers supported by our special needs coordinator, and  booster groups with the class teacher. It is our ambition to make sure that every child leaves our school able to read confidently.