Reading
At St. Edmund’s our aim is for every child to leave school as a fluent, confident reader, not only because reading is a valuable skill in its own right, but also because it is crucial to allow them to access the breadth of the curriculum as increasingly independent learners.
Because we believe reading is so important, it is central to our Homework Policy and your child will be expected to read a school book at home every day. You can find our Homework Policy on the Policies Page of this website.
While children are working on our Phonics Programme, they are given decodable books to practise on at home. These books will not contain any sounds or common words that the children have not been taught at school. Once children have completed the phonics programme, they will still be expected to read every day for homework, and each classroom is stocked with a wide range of challenging but engaging books for that purpose.
In Years 2-6 we teach reading using VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Predict, Explain, Retrieve, Summarise) reading comprehension questions as a basis for our lessons. Using this framework, we cover all the comprehension skills that children need to access a wide range of texts and develop their understanding in a well-rounded way.
In years 3-6, every class has a novel each term which is used for both reading comprehension and to inspire writing. The children have copies of the text to read along with the teacher and refer back to. Each lesson children will listen to a section of the book read by their teacher, have a chance to read with their partner and answer some VIPERS questions based on the section read. This approach allows for an in depth look at a real book and allows for higher level thinking to develop on authorial choice, genre and characterisation. Each class will also look at a range of poetry and non-fiction extracts which link to the main class novel to use for reading comprehension, ensuring a well-rounded approach to reading.
Ms Swarbrick is the Subject Lead for Reading. If you have any questions about how Reading is taught, speak to your class teacher or contact Ms Swarbrick through the school office.
Please see below for the notes from our most recent presentation to parents about reading.
presentation to parents about KS2 reading
Questions To Ask Your Key Stage 2 Child When Reading
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