Reading
Reading is at the heart of St. John’s. It is our intention that all children leave St. John’s as fluent, confident, lifelong readers. Reading opens the door to learning: the more a child reads the more they will learn. Our aim is to unlock the door to a wonderful world of knowledge and enjoyment through books.
The reading journey begins as soon as pupils enter Early Years with a systematic, synthetic phonic teaching programme (Phonics Bug) which enables children to de-code words and read their first books.
To help children read with fluency and understanding, we plan a range of high quality texts to read with the children that reflect a great literacy heritage as well as new and inspiring authors. We place reading for pleasure at the heart of what we do.
To achieve this, we follow the latest research and guidance regarding how to develop children’s reading skills.
Our reading journey therefore involves:
- Developing pupils’ language capabilities (spoken word).
- Securing phonic knowledge for our early readers.
- Supporting pupils to develop fluent reading capabilities, and read with prosody (correct stress and intonation).
- Teaching reading comprehension strategies through modelling and supported practice.
- Targeting teaching and supporting pupils by accurately assessing children’s needs.
- Using high quality structured interventions to help pupils who are struggling.
Our approach to teaching Reading:
Reading for Pleasure
Guided Reading
St. John’s Reading Model, Intent, Implementation and Impact
Skills Progression English Reading
Phonics
Progression Document Bug Club Phonics
Bug Club Phonics Books Progression Chart Sept 2021
Support for Parents
How to help your child pronounce each sound – phoneme Articulation of Phonemes (sounds)
Writing
All lessons are planned using the National Curriculum objectives. Year groups have a yearly overview of the writing genres (narrative, non-fiction and poetry) that they will teach. These have been planned to ensure the correct coverage of key genres, as well as building on knowledge and skills from year to year. Spelling, grammar and punctuation forms part of the writing process and is taught explicitly and applied across a range of contexts.
English Intent, Implementation and Impact
Long Term Overview 22 23 Year 1
Long Term Overview 22 23 Year 2
Long Term Overview 22 23 Year 3
Long Term Overview 22 23 Year 4
Long Term Overview 22 23 Year 5
Long Term Overview 22 23 Year 6
Progression Of Knowledge (Genres)
Spelling
We use the ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ programme to support our pupils to be good spellers:
