Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.    Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Children learn not just the mechanics of reading, but to become accomplished readers who develop the habit of silent reading and a love of reading for life. Each class has a designated reading area to help promote the love and high importance that reading holds in our school. They can enjoy exploring a wide selection of reading books, which helps them to develop an appreciation of our rich literary heritage.

This year, we are continuing to embed the ‘VIPERS’ reading skills into our curriculum so that children understand the different content domains, and can apply the skills they have learnt during both supported and independent guided reading activities.

Teachers have planned out their English sessions in line with their topics. They follow a three phase approach whereby children read a specific genre or text and become immersed in the texts; then they explore the language, structure and sentence types within a text; and finally apply what they know to write in response to what they have learnt independently. This has placed quality literature at the heart of our English lessons and has provided high-quality, cross-curricular opportunities. During phase 1, children learn to analyse, question and examine a text. They do this through ‘Active Reading’ where children use a range of skills to visualise, question, predict, clarify vocabulary and infer as they read.

Across school we use a range of reading texts which incorporate fiction and non-fiction.

Whole class reading in KS2

At St John's. we believe in a whole class reading approach in KS2.  All children are engaged in shared discussion about stories, characters, events, information and so on. Skilled teaching staff direct discussion; they can ask searching, well-directed questions, and gather all the children in at once in that defined area of learning.

Along with their teacher’s guidance, children can be supported as a large group to process the text, to get inside what’s going on, and then to make plausible predictions about where it might be going next. The teacher gets instant feedback about their pupils’ success, and the gist of where they might need more help. The very fact that everyone in the room is working on the same rich text offers that extra opportunity for a shared buzz of excitement, or horror, or humour, or a new opportunity for vocabulary-enrichment.

A whole-class reading lesson, too, offers opportunities to model, demonstrate and practise reading aloud with fluency and expression, when children can listen to the expert and then have a go for themselves, making their reading aloud sound natural and confident.

Love of Reading

Story time happens throughout the school daily where a quality story or poem is shared with children at the end of the day. This is a time for all children to engage in a story telling session with an adult. The texts used are carefully selected from Pie Corbett’s reading and poetry spine to ensure children are exposed to age-appropriate, exciting texts. This is a time that children look forward to and treasure. Through this, children are able to talk about a range of authors and poets.