Reading

What we do:

At St Mary’s, reading is taught in a progressive and systematic way, beginning in Reception and Year One with the ‘Little Wandle’ early reading programme and then later through the Book Bands system.

Our reading strategy is based on developing a love of reading through sharing whole class story time on a daily basis, engaging with families and inviting them to read with us, celebrating authors that we love and enjoy and in making recommendations to one another about books we’ve read. Alongside these strategies to build a passion for reading, we teach reading skills rigorously, so that reading becomes easy for our children to engage with.

Early Reading:

In Reception, Year 1 and the first half term of Year 2, children are taught to read through our Systematic, Synthetic Phonics programme (Little Wandle) and they read with their teachers 3 times per week to develop fluency, prosody and comprehension. For children who find reading hard or who fall behind we use the ‘Keep Up’ approach (Little Wandle) and deliver interventions to make sure children catch up quickly. Progress in reading fluency and comprehension in Year 1 and Reception is assessed every half term.

Year 2 – Little Wandle Fluency: 

We recognise the fundamental importance of securing confident fluency and automaticity when reading. 

Children who can read with over 90% accuracy, tackling unfamiliar words with familiar strategies and who can maintain a consistently fluent reading speed are better able to:

• Read for meaning, understanding and making use of what they have read
• Reading for pleasure and enjoyment. When reading becomes fluent, children are able to enjoy the experience! 

We use Little Wandle Fluency in Year 2. This programme supports children as they move beyond phonically decodable books into books matched to their reading age and stage. Pupils working through the fluency programme read with their teachers 3 times per week, building their strategies for reading longer, less familiar words and learning how to read with expression and meaning. These lessons take a dialogic approach to comprehension, exploring meaning and understanding through discussion in smaller groups, where teachers can work closely with pupils to guide their interpretation of a text. 

Pupils who need support in addition to their reading sessions receive this in a number of ways, following robust assessment and understanding of their next steps. These include:

• Targeted interventions to address specific gaps through approaches tailored for individuals
• Adapted lesson structures and resources
• Collaboration and communication with families to provide strategies, activities and advice 
• Some pupils in these year groups will continue working to secure their knowledge of phonics, following the Little Wandle ‘Keep Up’ approach.  

Years 3 – 6 – Novel Study:

Pupils with confident reading fluency are able to read for deeper meaning, exploring more challenging, stimulating and varied texts. Our novel study lessons take place over 4 days each week, giving pupils the opportunity to explore VIPERS comprehension skills (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarising). They do this in the context of texts chosen for their range of themes and genres. 

Once a week, pupils take part in a fluency skills lesson to continue developing their reading speed and expression with increasingly complex texts across a range of genres. These lessons are highly engaging, focussed on reading, listening and experimenting with prosody. 

Support and intervention continues for pupils who need additional help and teaching in their reading. In addition to support with phonics and decoding, some pupils will join interventions to build their understanding of what they read, including reciprocal reading and one to one daily reading.