At St George’s Church of England Primary School, reading is at the heart of the curriculum.

At St George’s CE Primary School we believe that reading underpins and unlocks all areas of learning. However, books are also like doors, open them and they can transport you to new worlds of knowledge and adventure, which is why reading for pleasure is also at the heart of our school’s curriculum.

Our aim is for every child to become a fluent and independent reader by the time they leave St George’s CE Primary School. We do this through using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds as a systemic synthetic phonics programme in early years and year 1.
See our programme overview in the document below

Little Wandle LS Programme Overview Reception and Year 1

Children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 also take part in reading practice sessions 3 times a week with a focused theme of decoding, prosody (expression) and comprehension.

As children progress and become more fluent with their reading we start to use VIPERS questioning to support the teaching of reading comprehension. VIPERS is an acronym which focuses on the 5 key areas of comprehension (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation Retrieval and Sequence/Summarise). See supporting documents below for VIPERS question stems that can be used at home.

KS1 VIPERS
KS2 VIPERS

We encourage children to read 5 times a week at home and for older children to record these in their reading records independently, helping them to become not only fluent readers, but critical and analytic readers as well.

Across the school we provide engaging and inspiring environments to promote pleasure for reading including books corners in every classroom and a whole school library, with access to fiction, non-fiction and poetry books. We also provide children with pleasurable experiences of reading, including World Book Day, visits from famous authors, opportunities to purchase pre-loved books at a discounted rate and brand new books at our Travelling Book Fair. We have a buddy system in place where Year 6 read with our Early Years class on a weekly basis; we also invite parents in to share a story with their child at the start of a school day. New to 2021 we have started ‘The Reading Roundup’ a new newsletter to keep children and parents up to date with all things reading across the school, and let’s not forget, Mrs Rye’s famous reading award, where children can select their own book to keep as a reward for hard work in other areas of their learning.

Visit your child's class page for further information on books suitable for their age group and strategies on how you can support your child with their reading.

For more information about our reading curriculum, please see the links below.

Early Reading and Phonics Intent Statements

Early Reading and Phonics Policy

Reading Roundup Newsletters