Reading

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. At St Joseph’s we aim to develop reading skills with our pupils in order to improve their life chances, provide them with life skills and to promote reading for pleasure and enjoyment.

We believe that reading can open doors for our pupils and can help them to gain experiences, improve language and vocabulary skills and stimulate their imaginations.  We aim to create confident readers who have good independent learning skills and develop a range of interests through reading. 

We are striving to create a passionate reading community. We believe that every child should be given the tools to develop into an enthusiastic confident reader.

A reader will:

• Be able to decode and read fluently
• Read with expression
• Read a range of genres for pleasure
• Make predictions and ask questions about a text
• Have a solid understanding of what they are reading
• Compare and make links between texts
• Be inquisitive and want to learn new vocabulary
• Read across the curriculum to further their knowledge

Children are exposed to reading as soon as they join EYFS. Each day they listen to stories, sing rhymes and build on their vocabulary. Alongside this, children are taught to read using our phonics scheme, Little Wandle. Please see our phonics section for more information on how this is taught. Children take home their phonics book and a book from our school library to enjoy with their parents at home.

Throughout KS1, children continue with their daily phonics sessions and start to focus on comprehension – understanding what they are reading.

In Key Stage Two, there is a greater focus on encouraging reading for pleasure wholeheartedly, whilst also emphasising the importance of comprehending a wide range of texts throughout the curriculum. Whole Class reading sessions are designed to build children’s stamina as readers as well as challenge them to retrieve facts, clarify words, evaluate and discuss texts in detail. If children still need phonics support they are given this through targeted intervention, regular opportunities to read one-to-one with an adult and have access to decodable books matched to their phonic ability. 

We are a Schoolreaders partner school

Schoolreaders recruits, places and supports volunteers in local primary schools to give  children one-to-one reading support on a weekly basis, boos:ng their literacy skills,  confidence, and reading fluency. We’re proud to be a partner school, able to provide our  pupils with this valuable extra reading time each week!  

Find out more at Schoolreaders.org