The most important gift our school can give a child is the power to read. It is a lifelong tool to enable them to gain knowledge and enable them to make a positive contribution to society. At Kates Hill Primary we recognise the importance of children first learning to read and then reading to learn. Reading is at the heart of the curriculum and through this approach children will develop a love of reading.

At Kates Hill our key reading principles are to:

• Ensure that children are exposed to a range of diverse, high-quality texts and authors throughout their time at Kates Hill.
• Enhance and broaden the vocabulary of all children.
• Enable a balance of content domains and reading skills across our reading offer.
• Provide opportunities to revisit content domains and skills regularly through careful modelling and chosen activities.
• Apply reading skills into different contexts across the curriculum.
• Instil a love of reading widely for pleasure within all children – both for now and the future.

Kates Hill ensures that reading, including the teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics, is taught on entry to the school, so children are able to segment and blend quickly. At Kates Hill, we use Read Write Inc Phonics (RWI) to give your child the best possible start with their reading. The school ensures that the assessment of pupils’ phonics progress is sufficiently frequent and detailed to identify any pupil who is falling behind the programme’s pace, so that targeted support can be given immediately. Please see our dedicated Phonics page for further information.

As children move off the phonics scheme in Key Stage 1, they move onto our reading programme, with reading and comprehension taught explicitly and deliberately to pupils by teachers daily in dedicated reading lessons.

Stories, poems, rhymes, and non-fiction are chosen to develop pupils’ vocabulary, language comprehension and love of reading. Pupils are familiar with and enjoy listening to a wide range of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction. Pupils are read to everyday and the core reading texts, including poetry, for each group are identified. Reading across the curriculum texts are also being identified and developed. Teachers are clear regarding the purpose of their reading sessions across the day. These include 1:1 reads for those needing support developing fluency, accuracy, speed and automaticity to enable them to read at hundred words a minute. Drop Everything and Read Time (DEAR Time) is utilised to develop a love of reading, broaden vocabulary and improve language comprehension. Reading areas develop pupils’ knowledge of authors and genres. This is enhanced further by opportunities such as the Book Fair, library visits and theatre productions of well-known texts.

Pupils have a love of reading and read confidently to gain new knowledge across the curriculum and of the world around them. They have a sound knowledge of genres and authors enabling them to make informed choices when selecting books. All pupils read fluently, accurately, with speed and enjoyment and have an enhanced cultural capital.