Reading

At Clatford, we encourage all children to develop a life-long love of reading. All children are exposed to and study high quality shared texts. These texts are often used as a springboard to interesting and creative writing opportunities, which support learning in the wider curriculum.

Children are also encouraged to develop their reading for pleasure. Each year group has a defined set of core texts. This reading spine is intended to create a living library inside our childrens’ minds: a store of classics and essential reads that help them engage at a deeper level and enter the world of the story, fostering a love of reading.

We believe that reading is the key to success and underpins children's access to the curriculum; it clearly impacts on their achievement. To be able to read, children need to be taught an efficient strategy to decode words. That strategy is phonics. Phonic decoding skills must be practised until children become automatic and fluent reading is established. Read, Write, Inc. is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) and it is the programme that we adopt at Clatford.

On-going assessment of children's progress takes place and the books children read in school and take home to read are fully decodable and matched to children's secure phonics knowledge.