At All Saints Junior School, our intention through teaching  reading is to: ​ 

 

• Increase a culture of reading for pleasure 

• Widen children's vocabulary​ 

• Increase the likelihood of understanding the next book they read. 

• Provide children with general knowledge and cultural capital 

 

Reading is fundamental across all curriculum areas and is at the core of teaching throughout the school. Through choosing high-quality texts, we intend to develop a love of reading and allow children to recognise the pleasure they can get from their reading. Children will develop an understanding that reading allows them to discover new knowledge, revisit prior knowledge and understand more about what they learn, stimulating their imagination for ideas to use in their own work. 

Our reading curriculum is delivered through consistent and robust teaching in daily lessons, through a text-based, content-driven approach, focussing on a high-quality text each term. Throughout the term, the children are also exposed to a wide variety of related fiction, non-fiction and poetry, broadening their knowledge of the wider world.  

The structure for teaching reading is driven by the text to secure fluency and prosody through explicit teaching of comprehension pre-requisites; vocabulary (to know the meaning of most of the words) and background knowledge (to have sufficient knowledge to understand the text). The structure comprises of three phases: 

Phase 1: 

In this initial phase, children learn the necessary components and prior knowledge to enable them to fully understand the text. The components include: 

• Knowledge of the type of plot, setting and characters 

• Geographical and historical background knowledge 

• Vocabulary relating to key concepts in the text 

 

Phase 2: 

This phase focusses on modelling fluent and prosodic reading and allowing children a range of opportunities to practise these skills through: 

• Modelled and shared reading 

• Listening to adults read out loud 

• Checking for understanding through quality, guided discussions 

 

Phase 3: 

This phase focusses on developing and deepening children’s understanding of the text. This is executed through a range of comprehension strategies: 

• Book talk 

• Links to other texts 

• A range of written responses 

• Exposure to different question types