At Chiltern Primary School, we are passionate about our children developing a life-long love of reading. We hope they feel inspired by reading teachers who are also teachers that read. We recognise that confidence and competence in reading can often be the gateway to children unlocking their potential in other curriculum areas so it is paramount they are successful in their early reading development, reading with automaticity and fluency as soon as possible. 

This begins with our systematic synthetic phonics programme in EYFS & KS, Little Wandle revised Letters and Sounds. By the time they reach year 2, we hope they will have cracked the complex 'code' that is the English language and can use this to segment and blend most unfamiliar words. 

As soon as the children have mastered the skill of word recognition and language comprehension, we model to the children how they are entwined resulting in the children starting to read more independently for meaning and for pleasure.

What do reading lessons look like? 

Year R and Year 1

• Daily 30-minute phonics lessons 
• Reading practice sessions in smaller, teacher-led groups. The children in the group will all read the same book and it will be closely matched to their reading level. The first session focuses on decoding, the second on prosody and the third on comprehension.

Year 2

• Daily 30-minute phonics lessons
• Any children who have not passed the phonics screening receive catch-up support through the personalised provision and high-quality inclusive teaching
• Reading practice sessions continue, with a focus on fluency
• Formalisation of comprehension teaching and learning including skills of reading such as selecting and retrieving

Year 3, 4, 5 and 6

• High-quality Reading and Writing lessons following a key text driver 
• Formalised teaching of reading skills for comprehension
• Adapted teaching and scaffolding of children that still need to secure their Phonics teaching 
• Targeted intervention for Reading skills