Holy Name Catholic Voluntary Academy

Developing a Love of Reading 
 

We feel passionately that developing a love of reading from an early age will benefit our children hugely: personally, socially and educationally. Therefore, reading is at the heart of everything we do. Through the use of carefully chosen texts, we ensure our children have access to literature that will spark their passion and develop a love of English. These texts are linked to our topics to ensure that it is meaningful and exciting. We invest in high quality texts that will meet the needs of all learners. 
 

In Key Stage 1 we use 'Floppy Phonics' to teach Phonics and Oxford Reading Tree and Project X as our reading schemes.

Reading Data...How do we know we are developing a love of reading? 

We want to ensure that every child reaches their full potential. In July 2022, 96% of pupils achieved the expected standard or above at the end of Key Stage Two. We want to ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to know the lengths they can go to if they are readers! 

There are lots of books listed on our Knowledge Organisers however the reading curriculum for all the year groups is below. This has been carefully thoughtout by leaders and teachers and planned as part of our wider curriculum.
We ensure that our reading curriculum meets the needs of all our children. 

 

• From the very early years of school life, we invite parents to come into class and learn about how to read with their child, so that this can be continued at home.
• Each week every class has a secret reader! A family member will arrive to read the story at the end of the school day, but the children do not know who it's going to be, this makes it extra exciting.
• At the beginning of the year we celebrate Roald Dahl in all classes, reading and writing from one of his fantastic books.
• We have a wonderful school library that the pupils access regularly, we also have great links with our local library and all classes enjoy visiting throughout the year. Pupils also participate in the local library holiday reads scheme.
• Each class has a book corner with specific fiction and non fiction appropriate for the year group. 
• We invite the travelling book fair to school, twice a year so that families can buy books together. This earns rewards for school so that we can buy even more books for our classroom and school libraries.  
• In March, we all love to dress up and celebrate World Book Day. Pupils are encouraged to dress as their favourite characters and we have lots of activities all about books. 
• Throughout the year older classes read to younger classes and enjoy time sharing books together.