Our approach to Reading

In Foundation and Key Stage 1 our reading books are organised through our own unique Barton St Peter's colour band system. Books come from a range of sources and suppliers to ensure that our children have access to a wide range of stories and reading material. All books have been matched precisely to the sequence of learning in our chosen phonics scheme- Read Write Inc. In June 2024, we carried out a systematic review of our early reading material to ensure that all children are able to read books that are matched correctly to the sounds that they know. We have done this to develop confident and fluent readers who have a love of reading, both at home and at school. Staff oversee book allocations on a daily basis for daily home reading to ensure that children read books with sounds that they know and are familiar with. Children re-read books to develop their fluency and automaticity in reading. 

In Key Stage 2 we  use the Oxford Reading Tree scheme which includes graphic novels, classics, poetry, Treetops Chucklers and a range of fiction and non-fiction texts, too. Once children are confident readers, they have the opportunity to read 'free reading' books which means they read books by different authors and do not follow a scheme. At this stage, our children have free choice to read books of their interest and choosing from class libraries and our two school libraries. We encourage children to follow their own interests in their reading

Our Year 5 and 6 Library Ambassadors work with pupils from across the school to help them to use our libraries correctly, to make great reading choices and to enjoy the calm and quiet atmosphere of our library. In addition to this, our whole-school recommended reads encourage our pupils to make great reading choices and recommend these to others! 

Children who require further support with reading may have daily 1:1 reading with adults, they may take part in our paired reading intervention or access discrete phonics teaching. For reluctant readers, our library ambassadors and reading champions (pupil-led) run paired sessions with younger pupils.

Beyond phonics teaching, our children are taught to comprehend and read for understanding through our whole-class reading curriculum. Our approach to whole class reading is underpinned by the key principles of Christopher Such. Our curriculum offers a balance between developing reading fluency and prosody and reading comprehension. For this we use three types of lessons; reading fluency, extended reading and close reading. Each lesson contains a blend of reading practice, discussion and unpicking a text and comprehension of the text. Lessons utilise high-quality texts, many of which are taken from ‘Books for topics recommended reading lists’ or other topic-related reading material, such as non-fiction texts or topics in the news.
At Barton St Peter's, children learn to read and read to learn on a daily basis.

Children are actively encouraged to read widely and we expect all children to read at least three times a week at home to an adult. We give children time to ‘catch up’ on home reading, where this has not happened. We aim to instil in all our children a positive attitude to reading – initiatives such as the Book in a Box Competition, 3 reads competition, Get Caught Reading competition, World Book + poetry Day celebrations, author visits and Me as a Reader activities and many more… all aim to promote this.

Please see the link to Barton St Peter's Whole School Reading Spine - this document details the high-quality literature that our children have access to during each termly topic. These texts are the centre of our curriculum, have been chosen and reviewed by our staff and form the basis of all learning opportunities across the Barton St Peter’s curriculum. High-quality texts are at the centre of every classroom curriculum across the school.