St. Gregory’s Catholic Primary School

Reading

At St. Gregory’s, we believe that reading underpins the curriculum and  is central to all learning.

Our aim is that children:

• Gain enthusiasm and enjoyment from the written word and enrich their language and understanding 
• Have opportunities to hear a wide variety of texts read aloud
• Have access to a wide range of reading materials
• Appreciate that books from all genres are produced by authors, illustrators and publishers, and develop opinions about the work of these people 
• Are encouraged to use a range of reading strategies in an appropriate way
• Offer personal and critical response to what they read
• Are able to use their reading skills to improve their learning across the curriculum
• Perceive research as an enjoyable and purposeful activity
• Have opportunities to use the school and class libraries
• Develop reading as a lifelong habit

 Reading is taught through a combination of many of the following:

• Reading to and with the child
• The development of phonological awareness
• Whole-word recognition
• Re-telling and prediction
• Using context, picture, syntactic and semantic clues
• Discussing character, plot, themes and style
• Using inference and deduction
• Recognition of grapheme combinations
• Development of presentation skills when reading aloud.

The timetable enables a variety of reading experiences within English lessons, in guided and shared reading sessions, discretely and in a variety of cross-curricular contexts. Children also read individually to teachers, teaching assistants. Authors, illustrators and other visitors are welcomed into school.

 Assessment of Reading

We assess the following aspects of each child’s development as a reader:

• The acquisition of a growing range of strategies for decoding words and making sense of the text
• The ability to use these strategies appropriately and flexibly
• The enjoyment of books and reading, and confidence and motivation in approaching new texts
• The range of reading experiences, both at school and at home
• The ability to reflect on reading and respond personally and critically to written text
• The ability to access, assess and present information from non-fiction texts
• The ability to use ICT to access information.

We use the following Reading schemes and Phonic resources to support the teaching of phonics and reading:

• Floppy’s Phonics- Letters and Sounds
• Espresso Phonics
• Oxford reading Tree Songbirds
• Big Cat Phonics
• Phonics Bugs
• Smart Kids Letters and Sounds activities
• Jolly Phonics
• Oxford reading Tree
• PM Starters
• Phonics play
• Wordshark