St Peter's Catholic Primary School
Reading at St. Peter’s
Reading at St. Peter’s is at the heart of everything we do. We promote a culture that celebrates a love of reading and we engage pupils at every age and stage of their individual journey.
Reading is the key that unlocks other areas of the curriculum. We aim to develop confident, inquisitive readers who can access all aspects of their learning.
We offer children a wide range of books to enjoy and use high quality texts to deliver objectives across the whole curriculum. Pupil engage in reading activities in phonic sessions, guided reading, within whole class literacy lessons and in other curriculum areas. Teachers read aloud to pupils for at least ten minutes each day and actively develop pupils’ vocabulary by exposing them to texts and language that may extend beyond their current reading ability.
At St. Peter’s we provide pupils with the opportunity to develop a range of different reading skills. We use reading gems from Year 1 onwards to teach a range of reading strategies and comprehension skills. The strategies taught include: phonics; sight vocabulary; contextual clues; comprehension and inference and deduction.
Guided reading takes place every day from Reception through to Year 6 and builds on the core skills we want to embed in pupils’ learning.
We encourage parents to read regularly with their child at home and each child has a reading record where comments can be recorded. A guide to support reading at home can be found here and in the inside cover of children's reading records.
Children in EYFS and Key Stage 1 have Big Cat Collins Phonic books, matched to our phonics scheme, ‘Storytime Phonics’ where they can practise and apply their phonic skills and knowledge in reading. These books are directly linked to phonics teaching and changed twice weekly by the class teacher who carefully tracks pupils’ progress. A guide to our Storytime Phonics scheme can be found here.
In addition children follow the coloured coded book band scheme for reading and these books are selected by the pupils and taken home and changed as frequently as possible.
We promote a culture of reading for pleasure and every class has a ‘Reading Challenge’ to complete throughout the year. Children are given the opportunity to read up to 20 age appropriate books which are a mixture of classic texts as well as new titles.
Phonics
At St. Peter’s progression in phonics skills and knowledge are taught following the Storytime Phonics programme, using stories and accompanying rhymes to help pupils remember phonemes and the corresponding graphemes.
All children in EYFS and KS1, receive a 20-minute phonics session every day. The children’s progress is regularly assessed and pupils that need extra support take part in interventions in the afternoons.
Phonics Tracker is used as an ongoing assessment tool.
All children in Year 1 take the Phonic Screening Check in the Summer Term and pupils have the opportunity to take this test again in Year 2. Children who do not meet the check beyond Year 2 are supported with carefully planned interventions.
All children in Year 1 take the Phonic Screening Check in the Summer Term and pupils have the opportunity to take this test again in Year 2. Children who do not meet the check beyond Year 2 are supported with carefully planned interventions.