‘Children who enjoy reading, read more regularly and therefore improve as readers’ (Willingham 2014). Subsequently, reading is at the heart of what we do at St Peter’s Church of England Junior School and we believe this is key to unlocking our pupils’ potential throughout the curriculum.

Our aim is for all pupils to be able to read with accuracy, speed, confidence, fluency and understanding. This will equip them will the skills necessary to access the next stage of their reading journey whilst striving to develop a life-long enjoyment of reading.

We have developed an engaging and challenging curriculum to meet these achieve these aims, and those of the National Curriculum, through clearly structured lessons that support and challenge all of our learners.

Our approach to the teaching of reading can be summarised as:

• Explicit teaching of reading strategies and skills and the development of the key comprehension strands: vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summary
• Delivery of a consistent structured approach to whole class reading
• Access and engagement with a wide variety of texts from different sources that enrich the wider curriculum and develop our pupils’ cultural capital
• Early identification of children who require additional support with reading and implementation of appropriate interventions including phonics
• Regular shared story time to develop listening skills, comprehension and vocabulary

• Developing the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.