Teaching Children to Read

Our Reading Intent

At the Rosary reading lies at the very heart of our curriculum and we are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers as we believe reading is key for success in their future! Roald Dahl believed “If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.”

Importance of Reading at the Rosary

We value the importance of reading and provide opportunities for children to learn the vital skills required to become proficient readers but also encourage them to want to read for pleasure. We believe reading is vital for children to enable them to learn new things including developing knowledge about the world, stimulate their imagination and can be highly beneficial for their own mental health.
We want all the children at our school to experience rich vocabulary, gain extensive knowledge about how stories can be told and to develop a love of reading as they move through the school.

Becoming a proficient reader is vital. Through reading we stimulate our imagination, maintain our wellbeing, learn new words and phrases, experience a range of emotions, develop empathy and acquire skills and knowledge.  Because of the learning potential gained by a fluent reader, the effects of reading on child development are vast.  Our aim is to provide our pupils with lots of opportunities throughout their school life to develop a life-long love of reading.  

We encourage our families to read with their children everyday - this additional practice is essential to developing reading proficiency - and we also run a paired-reading scheme at school. 

Early Reading

At our school we use Read, Write Inc systematic, synthetic phonics to teach our phonic programme. We teach our phonics, so that is accessible to all, by planning for 100% engagement from each child. Synthetic systematic phonics is a key skill that supports the development of early reading.

We place our quality phonics teaching in a language rich curriculum, with exposure to a range of texts. We continually aim to make strides towards closing the word gap and enabling children to become fluent and confident readers.

Working alongside parents and carers we want to provide our pupils with the skills they need to have a successful start to their lives as readers and to ensure that our children develop a love of reading.

For more information use this link to access the Read, Write Inc. guide for parents: Parent guide to Read Write Inc. Phonics | Oxford Owl

Our Reading Lessons

Children across the school have, on average, 3 taught reading sessions a week. These are whole class reading sessions which are a balance between practising reading fluency, discussion based learning and written comprehension. As well as this, children are regularly heard reading aloud by an adult in EYFS/KS1 and as regularly as possible in KS2. 

Reading for Pleasure in School

We encourage reading for pleasure when possible throughout the week in our school across all classes. Children have access to high quality texts from classroom book corners and we also have a school library with a vast collection of books for the children to enjoy and borrow. Teachers also prioritise reading aloud to their classes; in EYFS/KS1 this happens a minimum of once a day and in KS2 a minimum of 3 times a week.

Reading for Pleasure at Home

Reading for pleasure at home is an area we are keen to support parents/carers with as we believe reading is the key to succeeding in all aspects of the curriculum as research shows children who enjoy reading do better at school in all subjects.

Below you will find some useful documents for guidance on how to support your children when reading for pleasure at home. 

Further reading

The Reading Framework (DfE)

Links to resources to embed and extend your child's learning