Intent 

Curriculum design, coverage and appropriateness 

The intent behind our approach to Reading is: 

• To promote a love of reading, through teacher knowledge of high-quality texts used across the curriculum. 
• For children to obtain a word reading knowledge alongside comprehension skills in order to navigate texts and deepen their understanding of the world.
• To ensure that every child learns to read to a high standard of fluency and understanding, regardless of their background, needs or prior attainment. 
• Close the ‘word gap’ by expanding pupils' vocabulary, deepening their understanding of the texts they are reading and widening their use of spoken language.     

Implementation 

Curriculum delivery 

Teaching (pedagogy) 

Assessment (formative and summative)  

Reading is implemented through a holistic approach, whereby children are reading across the curriculum.  Children read every day, with the opportunity to read individually, in pairs and in small groups as part of a whole class session. Children have a broad and balanced reading diet, and are exposed to a range of genres and authors both 'Old and Gold' and 'New and Bold'. 

Following the completion of our phonics programme, typically during Year 2 once pupils have secured the full phonics code, children transition to Whole Class Reading. Through a carefully structured approach, pupils read and discuss ambitious, high-quality texts together, developing fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and oracy skills. Lessons combine teacher modelling, repeated reading, discussion, debate and written responses, enabling children to deepen their understanding of what they read while building confidence as readers. A diverse range of fiction, poetry and non-fiction texts ensures that children encounter both familiar experiences and perspectives from the wider world. Through Whole Class Reading, pupils develop the knowledge, language and critical thinking skills needed to engage deeply with books and become thoughtful, enthusiastic readers.

Click here to find out more about our approach to Whole Class Reading. 

The ongoing assessment of children’s reading progress is sufficiently frequent and detailed to identify any pupil who is falling behind. 

Teachers encourage reading for pleasure by:

• Reading aloud to children daily.
• Providing time and space for children and teachers to share their recommendations and opinions.
• Encouraging reading at home. Sending home books that closely match the letter-sound correspondences, but also able to take home an additional book from our school library or class reading corners to share.
• Parents visiting school termly to read with their children.  During this time parents are reminded about the importance of reading and all children are encouraged to regularly read at home.
• Using Reading Corners in the classroom. 
• Electing school librarians to represent our school and choose new books to order. 

Impact 

Attainment and progress (including national tests and assessments) 

The impact of our approach to Reading is that children are excited to read and frequently recommend and talk about their favourite authors and texts. 

In Summer 2026, 100% of our pupils passed the phonics screening check in y1 and 100% of children met the expected standard or higher standard in the KS2 SATs reading paper. 

Intent 

Curriculum design, coverage and appropriateness 

The intent behind our phonics approach is to: 

• Deliver a high-quality systematic synthetic phonics programme of proven effectiveness, followed with rigour and fidelity so that children are taught consistently to use phonics as the route to reading unknown words. 
• Ensure pace of the phonics programme is maintained through high quality teaching and same day intervention, so that children become confident, fluent and independent readers. 

Implementation 

Curriculum delivery 

Teaching (pedagogy) 

Assessment (formative and summative)  

Phonics is implemented through the Little Wandle programme. 

We are proud to be a Little Wandle Champion school, having met the 16 strands of excellence in the teaching of phonics and early reading. This means our children make accelerated progress in learning to read, evidenced through 5 consecutive years of 100% Phonics Screening Check passes.

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

• We teach phonics from week 2 in Reception and use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, ensuring that children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
• We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. 
• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress. 
• Reception children have daily phonics with the teaching assistant, whilst the year 1 children are taught by the class teacher. 

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

Phonics is taught in a whole class approach. Any gaps in knowledge are addressed through individual and group interventions (additional to whole class phonics sessions) from the start of the year in order for children to ‘keep up’ with their peers. Therefore, the children then move through the phase groups as one group together. Regular progress meetings are held with all reading teachers to monitor children making slowest progress and half- termly monitoring from the Hub Lead.  Children in danger of falling behind, or who are working behind the pace of the programme, are swiftly identified and enough additional support provided to enable them to keep up. 

• Any child who needs additional practice has daily 'Keep-up' support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.
• We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in children's phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week

• We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. 
• Children read books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments.
• This decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
• We engage our families and share information about phonics and how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.

Ensuring consistency and pace of progress

• Every teacher in our school has been trained to teach early reading by Little Wandle, so we have the same expectations of progress. We use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load.
• Lesson templates, Prompt cards and How to videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.
• The Reading Leader and Hub Lead regularly monitor and observe teaching and track progress rigorously.

Parental Involvement

• Parents are encouraged to attend phonics meetings where the class teacher models how to pronunciate the graphemes and are shown resources that they can access from home.

Impact 

Attainment and progress (including national tests and assessments) 

The impact of our consistent and systematic teaching of our phonics programme is that children become fluent and confident readers by the age of KS1. In addition, our Phonics Screening data was 100% in 2026.