The Teaching of Reading

At St. Teresa of Lisieux Catholic Primary School, we strongly believe that reading is a vital life skill and we strive for all children to enjoy and value it. It is our aim to develop and create passionate readers for life.

Throughout their time here children read a variety of books from different reading schemes. These are banded carefully to ensure that children read books at the correct level.  The books provide a variety of Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry texts for the children to enjoy.

The teaching of reading can be broken down into ‘Word Reading’ and ‘Comprehension’. Word reading is initially taught through phonics (Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence) and follows the scheme: ‘Read Write Inc’. Systematic phonics lessons are taught daily in the Foundation Stage and Year 1 (and those Year 2 children who have not passed the Phonics Screening Check) and underpin the teaching of early reading. The children also have daily Guided Reading sessions that last for 20 minutes. A different focus group is taught by the teacher or teaching assistant where the children will be taught new skills in order to progress with their reading. These skills are based on the teachers’ assessment and the children’s next steps. Further to the focus group, a carousel of activities is undertaken by the children working independently. The activities are linked to the texts the children are reading and promote the independent application of skills previously taught.

Key Stage 2 Children in Years 3 to 6 take part in daily Guided Reading session that last for 20 minutes. A different focus group is taught by the teacher daily, where the children will be taught new skills in order to progress with their Reading. These skills are based on teachers’ assessment and the children’s next steps. A greater emphasis is placed on reading comprehension skills, such as inference, prediction, deduction and information retrieval. Reading Plus is a computer programme used to help assess children’s reading comprehension and reading rate.

At St. Teresa’s, we recognise the strong links between support at home and success in reading and seek to encourage a positive home-school reading partnership. We recommend that you take the time to share books with your children to further develop positive attitudes towards reading. This can be a combination of you reading to your child, listening to them read and asking questions about what they have read. With your support, by the time children leave St. Teresa’s, they will be able to read confidently with a love of reading. They will also recognise the importance of reading as a key skill for life-long learning.

We have an extensive library in school that is well resoueces and timetabled throughout the day. We offer  a library club at lunch and break time for the children to use.  One of our trained TAs runs a read and relax club once a week after school as well.