Reading

Mrs Broughton is the Reading lead for St Luke's CE First School.

In this section, you will find the following information;

• Reading Policy
• Reading Vision
• Approach to Reading at St Luke's
• Story time
• Reading homework

Reading Vision

We want our children to:

• value and enjoy reading and to care for books.
•  become competent and fluent readers
•  become lifelong readers.
•  understand the value of stories in developing their own narrative and that of others.  

Approach to Reading at St Luke's

At St Luke's, phonics is taught as the main approach to early reading. We use the synthetic phonics programme Read Write Inc (RWI) to support the teaching of reading in Early Years and Key Stage One and for some in Lower Key Stage Two. RWI helps all children learn to read fluently which enables them to develop their comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. 

During daily phonics lessons, children are taught to recognise letters and their corresponding sounds and use this knowledge to segment and blend sounds together to read words. These decodable words are known as green words. They are also taught that some words can not be phonetically decoded and these are known as red words, which they are taught to read from sight. During each lesson the children also read a RWI book with a teacher or partner, these book are carefully matched to their reading ability. To ensure we meet the needs of all abilities and match books accurately we regularly assess children's phonic knowledge and group them for RWI lessons. 

More information on phonic progression expectations for Early Years, Year 1 and Year 2 can be found below as well as our Early Years and Key Stage One progression document and RWI parent information booklets.

Once children have completed the RWI programme they move onto to whole class/small group guided reading sessions. These session include a before, during and after reading activity. The activities focus on the following knowledge and skills:

Vocabulary

Infer

Predict

Evaluate

Retrieve

Sequence or Summarise

More information on progression across Lower Key Stage Two can be found on the document below.

Story Time

Story time is such an important part of our day at St Luke's. Every class has a daily story time where the children have the opportunity to enjoy listening to a story being read to them.

We want to ensure we expose the children to a wide variety of story types and authors so a whole school story time map has been created. This map includes books that the children will have read to them during each school year in their class story time. Any remaining story times can be filled with books chosen by the class teacher based on the class' interests and new and upcoming authors. 

Below is a copy of our whole school story time map.

Reading Homework

Children having the opportunity to practise their reading regularly has been proven to have a positive impact on the progress they make, not just in reading but all areas of the curriculum. That is why at St Luke's we expect children to practise their reading at home with an adult at least 3 times a week, and for the adult to record the book/pages they read in the child's reading record. 

Children who are on the Read Write Inc phonic programme will be sent home with a phonetically decodable RWI book matched to their ability. It is good practise to read the same book at least 3 times as this helps the child to develop their fluency and understanding. Children who have completed the Read Write Inc programme will be sent home with a level colour band book, again matched to their ability. Children are assessed each half term in school to ensure the book level they are on match their knowledge and understanding. 

As well as a reading book, the children will also bring home a school library book of their choice. This book is one to be shared with an adult at home, maybe read to them for a bedtime story.