St. Peter's C.E. Primary School, Ashton

INTENT: At St Peter’s, we recognise reading as the gateway to academic success, personal development, and lifelong opportunity. In line with the Reading Framework (2021), our intent is to ensure that every pupil becomes a fluent, confident, and enthusiastic reader through the systematic development of both decoding and language comprehension. We believe reading underpins success across the curriculum and equips pupils with the vocabulary, cultural capital, and critical thinking skills needed to thrive in modern Britain and beyond.

Our reading curriculum is designed to:

• Develop secure early reading and phonics knowledge through systematic synthetic phonics teaching.
• Foster fluent, expressive readers who can comprehend, analyse, and respond critically to a broad range of texts.
• Build pupils’ vocabulary, oracy, and background knowledge to strengthen comprehension and communication.
• Promote reading for pleasure through exposure to high-quality, diverse, and inclusive literature.
• Ensure all pupils, regardless of starting point or additional need, are supported to achieve success as readers.
• Create a strong reading culture where books, stories, discussion, and language are valued throughout school life.
• Oracy plays a key part in supporting our development of reading across school providing pupils with opportunities to discuss texts, opinions and changes to their reading. Including commenting on the fluency of the reading of their peers and teachers.

IMPLEMENTATION: Reading is prioritised across the school through a carefully sequenced and ambitious curriculum that develops fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and a genuine enjoyment of reading. Leaders ensure consistency, high expectations, and ongoing staff development so that reading is taught effectively in every phase.

Early Reading and Phonics

Early reading is taught with fidelity through the Read Write Inc programme, ensuring consistency and progression from Reception onwards. Daily phonics lessons at the beginning of the day are sharply focused and matched closely to pupils’ stages of development. Staff receive ongoing training and coaching to maintain high-quality delivery.

Key features include:

• Daily systematic synthetic phonics teaching.
• Rigorous baseline and ongoing assessment to identify gaps quickly.
• Immediate targeted intervention for pupils at risk of falling behind.
• Consistent routines, language, and resources across school.
• Strong links between phonics, early language development, and vocabulary acquisition.
• Home reading support and parental workshops to strengthen school-home partnerships.

Reading Comprehension and Language Development

As pupils become fluent decoders, teaching focuses increasingly on comprehension, vocabulary, oracy, and critical engagement with texts. Whole class daily guided reading sessions are carefully planned to develop higher-order thinking skills and deepen understanding.

Teachers explicitly teach:

• Inference and deduction.
• Retrieval and summarising.
• Prediction and authorial intent.
• Word meaning and etymology.
• Fluency and prosody.
• Verbal reasoning and discussion skills.

At St Peter’s we structure our guided reading across 4 sessions.

Session 1 introduces the children to the text through exploration of pictures, blurbs or front covers which involves the teaching of prediction. In this session the teacher also models fluency and intonation. The final part of session one involves a heavy focus on pupil fluency whereby a chosen part of the text is used by the teacher to heavily model aloud, the pupils then echo this and work in pairs to ensure intonation, speed and to convey meaning. These pairs take it in turns to perform aloud to their peers and feedback is given in relation to aspects of fluency only.

Session 2 follows with a vocabulary focus. This vocabulary is tier two based to ensure pupils understand that depending on context vocabulary meaning can change significantly. Pupils explore their meaning alongside the teacher orally. The teacher then provides a scripted session whereby the children are guided through a prediction, question and summary session. The children follow along as the teacher models how they would approach a text as a reader, looking at the key skills it would take to comprehend.

Session 3 leads into comprehension questions. These questions use the One Education question gems each week. I teacher chooses between 6 to 10 questions from these different domains paying particular attention to inference, retrieval and word meaning. These questions are formatted in different ways to provide pupils with the exposure of different question types. These questions are further scaffolded by a modelled pre-teach ‘Big Ding’ session where the teacher and pupils as a whole work through the first set of questions and pupils have to use their ‘magic finger’ to find the evidence and DING in their answer. This is completed before independent study.

Session 4 is a time we set aside from Years 3 to 6 for pupils to access a Reading Plus Programme. This programme focuses on accuracy and fluency in reading. Children are baselined at the beginning of the year and then the programme focuses on accelerating pupil progress in reading through training reading speed and accuracy in comprehending meaning of texts. Pupils also access this programme once in an afternoon session.

Vocabulary instruction is a central priority. Rich texts and “vocabulary trees” are used to expose pupils to ambitious language and develop word consciousness. Teachers model high-quality spoken language and create regular opportunities for structured discussion, debate, and presentation.

Reading is woven across the wider curriculum so pupils continuously apply reading skills in meaningful contexts while building cultural capital and background knowledge

Inclusion and Adaptive Practice

Reading provision is inclusive and ambitious for all learners. Staff use assessment effectively to identify barriers and adapt provision to meet pupils’ needs. Pupils with SEND or reading difficulties receive targeted support through interventions, scaffolding, accessibility tools, and adapted resources.

Diversity is intentionally reflected within reading materials so pupils encounter a broad range of perspectives and experiences. The use of multilingual resources, including Picture News translations, further supports language development and inclusion for families with English as an additional language.

Fluency interventions run for pupils in year groups where fluency gap is pronounced. This is in aid to enhance progression in comprehension accessibility.

Assessment and Monitoring 

Leaders maintain a sharp focus on reading through regular monitoring, pupil voice, coaching, and assessment analysis. Formative and summative assessment, including NTS assessments, inform planning, intervention, and curriculum refinement.

Reading leaders monitor:

• Progress in phonics and fluency.
• Quality of teaching and consistency of practice.
• Reading engagement and attitudes.
• The effectiveness of interventions.
• The breadth and ambition of the reading curriculum.

Professional development ensures staff maintain strong pedagogical knowledge and remain informed by current research and best practice.