Reading

Intent: Reading is of key importance and is at the heart of our curriculum: we want every child at Newton Primary School to love books.  Our shared reading curriculum is built around a sequence of high-quality, age-appropriate texts, using Literacy Counts’ Ready Steady Read Together units of learning. This resource provides dynamic and inclusive lessons that integrate metacognitive strategies and feature diverse literature from exceptional authors. It aims to inspire children and families to develop a lifelong love of reading for pleasure, knowledge and information.

The intent is that all pupils, from year 2 to year 6, regardless of their needs, abilities or background, have opportunities to meet, and where possible exceed, the National Curriculum expectations for reading comprehension. Ready Steady Read Together gives every pupil access to high-quality texts, enabling them to experience literature that develops fluency, vocabulary and understanding. Through teacher modelling of expression, pace, intonation and prosody, children learn how skilled readers bring meaning to a text and how these features support comprehension.  Shared reading also creates opportunities for discussion, questioning, drama and exploration of language, which deepen comprehension whilst enhancing oracy skills. Crucially, it ensures that every child, regardless of their decoding ability, can engage with ambitious texts and develop the habit of reading widely and often for both pleasure and learning.

Implementation:  Our children learn to decode through the systematic synthentic phonics programme, Read Write Inc (please visit our Phonics page for more details about this). Children in Reception and KS1 take home a decodable book, as well as a 'reading for pleasure' book to enjoy with their family. From Year 2 onwards, Ready Steady Read Together units are built around engaging, vocabulary-rich texts and provide a wealth of opportunities for reading, discussion and metacognition. Each unit follows a clear sequence of learning episodes, supports vocabulary development in context and includes structured opportunities for retrieval, fluency and strategy modelling and discussion. Gamification elements and interactive low-stakes quizzes link directly to the KS1 (Year 2) and KS2 (Years 3–6) reading content domains, reinforcing understanding while ensuring progression through the National Curriculum. 

Impact:  Progression is actively embedded within teaching to build comprehension skills, word reading, understanding of terminology and knowledge of the content domains step by step, ensuring consistency and clarity across the year groups.  From Year 2 onwards, children also take part in a scheme called Accelerated Reader where they are assessed regularly and given an appropriate reading band to allow enjoyment and suitable challenge.