Reading
At St Mary’s, reading sits at the heart of our curriculum.
We believe that becoming a fluent, confident reader unlocks every other area of learning and helps children build a lifelong love of knowledge. By the time pupils leave St Mary’s, they read with accuracy, understanding, and enjoyment across a wide range of texts — fully prepared to access the KS3 curriculum and continue their journey as enthusiastic, independent readers.
How do we teach reading?
Across the school, our reading curriculum is built on a set of consistent principles designed to ensure high-quality teaching in every year group. We have worked closely with Hampshire Advisory Services to develop a robust and effective approach to reading that supports all learners.
A structured and inclusive reading curriculum
Daily reading sessions form a central part of our approach. During these sessions, children build on both their fluency and comprehension skills through guided teaching, discussion, and exposure to a wide range of high‑quality texts. This consistent practice helps pupils gain confidence, deepen their understanding, and enjoy reading for pleasure as well as for learning.
High-quality texts as the driver for learning
Teachers carefully select rich, engaging texts to lead our topic-based learning. These texts not only develop key comprehension skills and broaden vocabulary but also inspire curiosity and a genuine love of reading. Our school has invested significantly in a well‑stocked library containing a wide variety of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and picture books, all of which support teaching across the curriculum.
A broad and diverse reading experience
Children encounter classic and contemporary fiction, poetry, and high-quality picture books throughout their time at St Mary’s. Reading skills are further developed using a range of inclusive and stimulating resources — including picture stimuli, short films, and other visual media — to help all learners access and enjoy reading.
Phonics
At St Mary’s, we recognise that reading is made up of many skills — and phonics is one of the most important foundations. We use the Little Wandle phonics programme to support children who still need to strengthen their decoding skills in Key Stage 2.
As a school, we are on a journey to ensure every adult is a teacher of phonics. All staff take part in ongoing training and development, so phonics teaching is confident, consistent, and embedded as part of our rich reading curriculum. Through Little Wandle, children learn to segment and blend sounds to read unfamiliar words, building accuracy, confidence, and fluency.
Targeted small-group phonics interventions sessions help bridge the gap between completing Little Wandle and becoming confident, independent readers. Regular assessments identify gaps quickly so that support is timely and effective. Phonics is taught consistently across the school, with teachers closely tracking each child’s progress.
What can you do to help?
As always, we recommend you spend as much time reading as possible! Now, more than ever, reading is a great escape into different stories to explore. Below are a few suggestions of websites and resources that you can use to help your child to develop and grow as a reader.
Reading List
Here is the link to the recent reading list for Key Stage 2 pupils - it is helpful for new ideas and books for your child.
https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/reading-lists-for-ks2-school-pupils/
Audible
Audible have made a selection of titles free to use for children on desktops, laptops, tablets or phones. Lots of great stories to explore here.
https://stories.audible.com/start-listen
The School Run
TheSchoolRun.com is a good website to have a look at for learning ideas. There is some downloadable content you might want to explore linked to grammar and literacy alongside other curriculum areas. They have phonics, spelling, handwriting, grammar and reading comprehension support available on their website.
The Reading Realm
If you want further writing prompts, you could have a look at The Reading Realm. They have a page dedicated to creative writing which has lots of different ideas you could use if you want to have a go at some imaginative storywriting at home.