Reading

At St Catherine’s we believe reading is the master skill. Our commitment is that every child at St Catherine’s will learn to read confidently, fluently and for enjoyment. In order to fulfill this commitment we ensure that all teachers are given training and regular professional development to enable them to be expert teachers of reading. We ensure that from the earliest opportunity, we expose our children to a rich array of stories, songs and rhymes and that throughout their time in our school, the curriculum is language rich and reading is a pleasurable and rewarding experience for all. Termly we hold parent workshops where we share best practice and strategies for reading at home. Check the newsletter for upcoming workshops.

To find out more about our Early Years curriculum and early reading click here

Read Write Inc.

We believe that all children should begin to acquire the knowledge of synthetic phonics as soon as it is appropriate for their stage of development. As a school, we commit to one systematic synthetics phonics program; Read Write Inc. Daily delivery, along with identified individual support, ensures each child progresses through the program and succeeds in learning to read and thus being able to read to learn. All children who are working on the Read Write Inc. phonics program will bring home a Read Write Inc. storybook to read at home. This will match their current phonological awareness enabling them to consolidate and practice their reading skills at home. All staff receive regular training to ensure delivery of the program is highly effective.

To find out more about Read Write Inc. click here

As outlined in the National Curriculum:

Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world they live in, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. (National Curriculum 2014)

In all of our classes shared reading is planned for and prioritised daily by class teachers so that children are able to experience and enjoy a wide range of stories that they may not otherwise experience. Through planned reciprocal reading lessons, children are supported to develop their confidence in clarifying unknown vocabulary, inferring and deducing ideas beyond the text and in linking ideas and themes within and across texts.

Reading for pleasure

The simplest way to make sure we raise literate children... is to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity, and that means finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. (Neil Gaiman, 2017).

Across school, staff support children to identify books they enjoy by regularly sharing and discussing different texts with their classes that span a range of different genres. Children are encouraged to read regularly at home through the use of reading records.. All children are able to borrow books from their classroom libraries to read and enjoy at home whilst children and parents are regularly encouraged to recommend books to one another.  

In 2018, we began work on our dedicated library space. Children currently enjoy books in the library with their teachers and use the space to engage in listening to, choosing and recommending new texts to read as a class. Our library is now fully stocked, and soon children will be able to borrow a wider range of high quality fiction and non-fiction texts to read at home when restrictions allow us to do so.

This year we are part of the Reading for Pleasure project with the Open University. This is an amazing project promoting a love of reading throughout the school. Our aim is to get every adult and child reading for pleasure! Here’s how you can support our Reading for Pleasure project at home…