Reading at Beenham Primary School

Reading Intent

At Beenham Primary School, we believe that reading is an essential life skill, and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers.

At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise age-related, high quality and thought-provoking texts.

Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future lines of study and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole-school approach to the teaching of reading to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or higher.

Reading Implementation

We teach Phonics and early reading through the validated systematic phonics programme Monster Phonics (please see the Phonics section of the English pages for more information). In Key Stage 2, we use a Whole Class Reading Approach. This approach has been chosen to enable all children, regardless of ability, to be exposed to age-related, high-quality text and rich Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary.

Reading Assessments are in place on our assessment schedule. From these assessments, gaps in learning are identified and teachers plan learning to fill those gaps. We use Pixl assessments and resources to support with this.

Reading Assessments are also used by the SENCo to identify children that require any intervention. 

Our lowest 20% of children are identified and are part of a fluency intervention in which they are heard read a minimum of 3 times per week to practice their fluency and phonics. The children who require Phonics intervention also receive this. 

Reading is regarded as a priority in our school, and we promote reading in a variety of ways throughout the school; we set regular reading challenges throughout the year and provide an online reading resource for children to access at home.

We are in the process of building a reading spine for the school using high quality text which link to our wider curriculum project themes.