Our Intent for Reading

At Spurcroft Primary School, we want our all children to become confident and independent readers in their adult lives. Our main goal it to enable this future confidence through promoting a lifelong love of reading which is reinforced throughout a child’s primary education at Spurcroft. We aim for children to challenge themselves in their reading and not only to read for pleasure but to read a range of texts that move a child out of their usual comfort zone to experience a range of genres and styles of book. Our children are fully supported in reading so that reading is inclusive for children with even the highest level of SEND. We aim for children to build reading skills which will be relevant to their futures in giving children the skills to read text which will prepare them for a future life in the 21^st century workforce.

We want children to be taught the skills of reading outlined in the National Curriculum and the KS1 and KS2 test content through engaging and interactive lessons, focussed on reading skills.

The approach with our curriculum is to teach Early Reading as part of our Read Write Inc phonics sessions. From Year 2, once children have completed this programme, they will move to whole class reading sessions. Each class from Year 2 to Year 4 has a 30-minute reading session per day, while years 5 and 6 have a 45-minute lesson per day. This involves reading a high quality text as a whole class, and then developing their vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequencing (KS1) or summarising (KS2) skills. It also involves asking questions as well as answering them.

How do we teach reading at Spurcroft?

Reading in Reception and Year 1

In Early Years and Year 1 children receive a daily Read Write Inc. lesson delivered in a small group by a trained member of staff. This lesson includes a ‘Speed Sounds’ session where children learn and review the sounds needed to decode, followed by a Reading and Writing lesson. During the reading lesson children are given a text to read with their partner, and focus is on accuracy and fluency as well as developing expression. This will either be part of a three-day cycle or a five-day cycle. Children will take it in turns to read the story with their partner but will also have the chance to practise reading sounds, decodable words (green words) and sight words (red words) with their partner too.

Reading in Year 2 – Year 6

From Year 2 to Year 6 each year group teaches reading as a whole class session using the Master Readers programme. We build confident, fluent readers through high-quality language rich texts, guided, shared and independent reading and lots of book talk!

Looking for your child’s next great read?

Books for Topics has handy book checklists for every year group, which you can download here:

• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Nursery
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Reception
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Year 1
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Year 2
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Year 3
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Year 4
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Year 5
• 50 Recommended Reads for children in Year 6