^{English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them.}

^{Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.}

^{All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.}

^{National Curriculum (2013)}

Our school uses a range of texts to support the teaching of reading.  For early readers, we use the 'Unlocking Letters and Sounds'  phonics programme (please see separate page for more Phonics information). 

As the children become more confident readers, they progress through our ‘colour banded’ books, according to their reading development. Alongside the phonics books and colour banded books children have a range of books to take home as 'sharing books' to explore with their families.   When we feel they have achieved a good level of decoding and comprehension skills, children become’ free readers’ and select from a wide range of age-appropriate books.  

In Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 (term 1 to 3), reading skills are taught and assessed through Guided Reading Sessions.  These skills are then taught through our Whole Class Reading sessions in Year 2  (term 4 to 6)  to Year 6.  Children explore a wide range of text types to expand their vocabulary and develop skills of inference, summarising, retrieval, prediction.  

A love of reading is fostered in our school and the importance of reading for pleasure reflected in our environment and practice.  Our staff are seen as reading role models, weaving the joy of reading into all aspects of school life.