Reading at St Joseph's 

At St Joseph’s, all children have stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction texts, appropriate to their age group, read to them.  We understand the value of developing confident and enthusiastic readers, therefore we take every opportunity to promote reading and to ensure that it is enjoyable for all.  

Children in Year R and Year 1 are actively taught and supported to use phonics as the only approach to decoding with fully decodable books which match their phonetic understanding.  However, we also wish to foster a love of reading which comes from sharing high quality texts.  With this in mind, children also select a book from the class library to take home each week and share with their families.   

From Year 2 upwards reading skills are taught in daily whole class lessons which provide children with opportunities to share and discuss a range of high-quality texts.  Children are explicitly taught the skills of skimming, scanning, predicting, retrieving and inferring and given opportunities to practice and apply these skills.  

Reading is a skill and, as with every skill, it requires not just instruction but practice. Reading practice serves a number of purposes. It enables students to apply the skills and strategies that we have taught, it gives us opportunities to check student learning and identify weaknesses and it draws students into the world of “real” reading - a world in which people learn from and enjoy books. 

Reading is embedded throughout our curriculum and we recognise the importance of sharing and introducing children to a diverse range of texts and authors which will support their wider learning in school as well as celebrating the heritage of our children.   

Once children have become fluent readers, they move onto the Accelerated Reader programme.  Children are assessed termly using an online standardised programme to identify books which are at the correct level for them and they select books which are of this level from the class libraries for independent reading.  These books are regularly shared with adults at home and at school.  Once a book has been completed, the child is given the opportunity to quiz on it in school to check their comprehension.  Teachers monitor children’s results and ensure that all children are selecting books of an appropriate level and are showing a good level of comprehension of the texts they read.   

When children become a ‘reading millionaire’ meaning they have read 1,000,000 words within an academic year, they are celebrated in an assembly and enter into our ‘Millionaires’ Club’. We are incredibly proud of every child who achieves this status.  

We host ‘The Travelling Book Fair’ three times a year, which proves to be a hit- families and children spend time choosing from a range of books which supports us as a school to earn rewards and replenish our reading corners regularly.