Reading
Reading is a lifelong skill and St Mary's places reading and books at the centre of the curriculum. Our aim is to promote a life-long love of reading in every child and that children move from learning to read to reading to learn. We ensure that children experience a wide range of texts, genres and activities across the curriculum. There are daily opportunities for reading and each class has dedicated story/reading slots timetabled, which are a mixture of poetry/rhyme time, fiction and non-fiction. Adults model fluency, expression and discuss new vocabulary, making links with prior knowledge across the curriculum.
The children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 take home a phonics reading book matched to the phonics phase they have been learning and matched to the Little Wandle scheme. These are fully decodable reading books. Once children are independent readers they borrow fiction or non-fiction books from the library.
We follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme Pathways to Read. Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in year groups 2 to 6 are given varied opportunities for reading. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the reading activities provided. Should children continue to need phonics and decodable reading books, this continues into Key Stage 2.
In KS2, the programme is delivered through whole class shared reading lessons. In our whole class reading, there is a clear teaching focus with the opportunity to master key reading skills in each session. There are follow on reading tasks to enable pupils to evidence the skills they have mastered independently.
Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Read approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.
You will find the end of year expectations for reading for Y2 to Y6 in the file at the bottom of this page.