Reading

Intent
At Burstow Primary School, we believe that children should have the opportunity to develop their passion and love of reading from an early age. We believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. At Burstow, we recognise how a secure reading foundation unlocks learning across the wider curriculum, underpinning skills to be successful, lifelong learners. We strive to ensure all children are readers.
We want our children to develop their skills and knowledge and begin this journey through our well-embedded phonics scheme – Read Write Inc.

Implementation
Reading weaves throughout our curriculum, giving children many opportunities to develop reading in a purposeful and engaging way. Read Write Inc. Phonics is a DfE validated systematic synthetic phonics programme with a whole school approach to teaching early reading and writing, designed to ensure progress for every child. Find out more about Phonics at Burstow here.

We continue our phonics journey into KS2, to support our learners who are not yet secure. Overall, our approach to reading, phonics and writing is interlinked, purposeful and inspired by our creative curriculum.

Teaching in reading sessions, focusses on developing pupils’ competence in both word reading and comprehension as outlined in the National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Reading. We pride ourselves on our literature rich environments. Every classroom has stimulating and inviting book corners, where children are encouraged to explore and organise their books. Children are encouraged to read at home through our use of ‘Reading Races’, which promotes and values reading.

Children have access to our school library each lunchtime, where our Junior Librarians run story times and help develop a love of reading. Each class also has time to explore the library with their teacher each week and can take home a reading for pleasure book to enjoy.

Please find our Reading Skills Progression Map below: