Our Vision for Reading at Jupiter Primary School

At Jupiter, all children develop a love of reading and learn to read accurately and fluently. Children develop the skills needed to read in their early months at the school through a systematic approach to learning to read. In timetabled sessions throughout their time at the school, children have opportunities to discuss and read high quality texts and study core texts to develop vocabulary and language comprehension. Children read to an adult at least once a week and teachers record relevant information that is used to support children’s progress.

Teachers constantly assess and plan for next steps which enables children to make good progress. Quality interventions support children who may have fallen behind in order to catch up. High numbers of children achieve at or beyond age related expectations. Children take home a reading book appropriate to their skill level and this will be complemented with a range of other texts including a library book they can choose to read for pleasure. Once children are competent readers they go to the library to choose a reading book. Reward schemes and incentives encourage regular reading at home. Children have age appropriate opportunities to share what they have read with their peers.  Children read for enjoyment and special events promote a love of reading throughout the school year including author visits that enrich the curriculum. Time is allowed in the curriculum for reading for pleasure and a comfortable reading area in each classrooms enables children to do this.  

Our Reading Curriculum

At Jupiter, we produce confident and lifelong readers who value books and enjoy reading. We use a range of reading material to teach reading, including the Literacy Tree, Oxford Reading Tree and Bug Club reading books. These are split into levels that the children work through until they become free readers and move onto books in our library. Early reading books are split into sub-levels that closely link to the phonic level of each individual child to enable then to practise and use their phonic knowledge.

We believe the exposure to children’s literature within the primary school setting is vital as a rich context for learning, not only within English as a subject, but to support building a reading culture throughout the school and to encourage reading for pleasure. We use high quality texts which offer opportunities for empathy and can aid philosophical enquiry, encouraging debate, drama and discussion using the issues raised through, and within, a text. These are evident in all classrooms, as well as in our well resourced library, which all children are taught to use. 

Supporting your child with Reading

When listening to your child read at home each evening, it is important to focus on their comprehension skills as much as their decoding of the text. The following link provides ideas for discussion starters, ways of asking questions and generally provides support for parents and carers. You will find this an extremely helpful tool to help move your child's reading forward and keep them interested and challenged.

The prompt sheet is structured for Reception/Year 1/Year 2 and then for Year 3 upwards. However, there will obviously be younger children who would benefit from working on more advanced concepts and older children who would become more confident by revising some of the earlier support ideas.