Reading

At St Thomas Primary School the whole school community knows how important reading is to raise standards across the whole curriculum. As a result, we make it our top priority to support ALL pupils in becoming confident, engaged and successful readers – achieving the highest possible standards.

Intent:

At St Thomas Primary School, we recognise that reading is one of the most vital skills a child will ever acquire. That’s why we strive to embed a love of reading into the heart of everything we do. We are committed to creating a reading culture where all pupils are given the support, challenge, and opportunities they need to achieve success, regardless of background or starting point. Our aim is to develop confident, fluent readers who read with understanding and enjoyment, and who use reading as a key to unlock learning across the curriculum and throughout life.

We aim to develop pupils who: Take great pleasure in listening to stories read aloud and enjoy choosing and reading books for themselves.

Are happy, healthy, and curious learners who read fluently and confidently, using reading to explore and understand the world around them.
Read with prosody, accuracy, automaticity, and speed, freeing up cognitive capacity to fully comprehend what they read.
Build a broad and rich vocabulary, empowering them as readers, writers, and speakers.
Develop a lifelong love of reading, becoming enthusiastic, independent, and reflective readers.
Make links to prior knowledge, building on the skills, knowledge, and understanding they have acquired over time.
Confidently decode unfamiliar words and phrases, using strategies such as reading around the text to support understanding.
Respond thoughtfully to what they read, retrieving key information and making accurate inferences and justifications.
Summarise main ideas in a text, considering the key elements of who, what, when, where, and why.
Experience a wide range of high-quality literature, carefully woven throughout our curriculum and school day.

Reading is taught explicitly and consistently every day, from Reception through to Year 6, using a wide range of purposeful, engaging, and challenging learning opportunities. At St Thomas, we are committed to ensuring every child learns to read with fluency, accuracy, prosody, and deep understanding—because we believe every child has the right to become a reader.

Implementation:

At St Thomas Primary School, we implement a consistent and rigorous approach to the teaching of reading, underpinned by a structured 7-stage teaching sequence. This approach is embedded from Year 1 through to Year 6, ensuring continuity, progression, and high expectations across the school. The 7-stage format supports pupils in developing fluency, confidence, and comprehension, while fostering a genuine enjoyment of reading. For 30 minutes, four days a week, pupils engage in focused reading sessions that are carefully structured to build word-level knowledge, deepen understanding, and enhance reading fluency. Texts chosen for these sessions are age-appropriate yet challenging, enabling children to access rich vocabulary, varied sentence structures, and stimulating content that sparks discussion and critical thinking. The amount of time spent on each stage is responsive and driven by pupil data, ensuring personalised and targeted teaching.

The 7-stage teaching sequence (disciplinary knowledge):

Activate Prior Knowledge – Making links to previous learning to prepare for new content.

Reading and Fluency – Teacher modelling and pupil practice focusing on prosody, pace, and decoding.

Initial Thoughts and Observations – Pupils share first impressions, predictions, and surface-level responses.

Breakdown and Repair – Tackling challenging vocabulary or confusing content to build clarity.

Summary – Pupils summarise key information using the 'who, what, when, where, and why'.

Delve at a Deeper Depth – Analysing characters, authorial intent, themes, and messages within the text.

Comprehension Questions – Retrieval, inference, and explanation questions with justification using evidence from the text.

In addition to the structured reading lessons, pupils take part in ERIC (Everyone Reading In Class) once a week, where they are encouraged to read a book of their choice during lesson time, promoting autonomy and reading for pleasure.

Reading for Pleasure:

Story Time

Story time is a valued and protected part of our school day. Teachers read aloud daily in a calm, distraction-free environment, bringing stories to life through the use of prosody, expression, and varied tone, modelling expert reading behaviours for pupils. These sessions not only immerse children in high-quality literature but also offer time for meaningful discussions about the text.

At St Thomas, we strongly believe that reading a lot makes a difference. That’s why reading is prioritised across the curriculum and throughout the school day—from structured teaching to shared reading for enjoyment—ensuring that all children become confident, capable, and enthusiastic readers.

Impact:

At St Thomas Primary School, we believe that our carefully designed reading curriculum has a profound and lasting impact on our learners. It fosters essential foundational skills, develops critical thinking, promotes empathy, and cultivates a lifelong love of reading—all of which underpin both academic success and personal development.

Foundational Literacy Skills: Through a clear focus on phonics, vocabulary development, fluency, and comprehension, pupils are equipped with the core skills required to decode, understand, and engage with a wide range of texts. This strong foundation in reading supports learning across all areas of the curriculum.

A Love for Reading: By celebrating reading across the school and exposing children to a wide variety of genres and authors, we nurture a lifelong enjoyment of books. Our carefully curated St Thomas Book Spine ensures that pupils experience high-quality, age-appropriate literature, enabling them to explore the joys of storytelling, imagination, and knowledge.

Deeper Understanding through the 7-Stage Format: Our consistent 7-stage teaching approach encourages children not only to understand what they read but also to explore why and how texts are written. Pupils learn to analyse, infer, question, and reflect—developing the critical thinking skills necessary to interpret and appreciate increasingly complex texts as they move through the school.

Cultural Awareness and Empathy: Exposure to a diverse range of characters, settings, and authors helps our pupils build empathy and cultural understanding. Through literature, they are able to see the world from different perspectives, helping them become more compassionate, open-minded individuals.

Improved Academic Outcomes: Reading is the gateway to learning. As our pupils become more fluent, confident readers, we see positive outcomes across the wider curriculum, with reading comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and independence contributing to improved performance in all subjects.

Targeted Support and Intervention: Regular, robust data analysis enables us to swiftly identify pupils requiring additional support, including those in the lowest 20% or those deemed at risk. Timely and targeted fluency or comprehension-based interventions help to close gaps and ensure all pupils are supported in reaching their full potential.

Inclusive and Adaptive Teaching: All reading lessons are designed to be engaging, inclusive, and accessible. Adaptations and scaffolding ensure that every child—regardless of background or ability—can access and enjoy reading.

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KIRKLEES LIBRARIES ARE INVITING YOU TO BRING YOUR CHILD TO THE LIBRARY!

Kirklees Libraries are open! Visit your local library in The Chestnut Centre, open 9-5 every week day, where you can borrow books for free. There is no charge to join the library and no fines for late returns.

Find out more on our website: www.kirkleeslibraries.co.uk

We also have lots of free family activities, from storytimes to lego clubs.

Book a free ticket at www.ticketsource.co.uk/kirkleeslibraries

Join the library online: https://kir.ent.sirsidynix.net.uk/client/en_GB/default/

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RECOMMENDED WEBSITES

Book Trust

Reading Rockets