At our school, reading is at the heart of the curriculum. We believe that confident, fluent readers are successful learners, and we are committed to developing a lifelong love of reading alongside the skills needed for academic success.

In EYFS and Key Stage 1, children learn to read through a structured, systematic synthetic phonics programme - Twinkl phonics. Pupils read carefully matched decodable books that closely align with the phonics sounds and grapheme-phoneme correspondences they have been taught. This enables children to apply their phonic knowledge successfully, develop accuracy and build confidence as early readers. This approach reflects the Department for Education's Reading Framework guidance, which emphasises the importance of closely matched phonics instruction and decodable texts. 

In Key Stage 2, pupils build on these secure foundations through a rich and varied reading curriculum. Children develop their understanding of a wide range of texts, including high-quality novels, picture books, poetry and non-fiction. Alongside whole-class novels, pupils explore shorter texts from Complete Comprehension, enabling them to practise and master the KS2 reading content domains, including retrieval, inference, prediction, explanation, vocabulary and summarising.

A central feature of our reading curriculum is the development of reading fluency. Current national guidance identifies fluency as a crucial bridge between decoding and comprehension. We explicitly teach and assess fluency through modelled reading, repeated reading, echo reading and guided oral reading, helping pupils read with increasing accuracy, automaticity, pace and expression. When children can read fluently, they are better able to focus on understanding and responding to what they read. 

We also place a strong emphasis on the explicit teaching of reading comprehension skills. Through high-quality discussion, questioning and vocabulary instruction, pupils are taught how skilled readers think, monitor their understanding and engage deeply with texts. Our approach is informed by the DfE Reading Framework and Education Endowment Foundation guidance, which highlight the importance of developing both word reading and language comprehension in order to create successful readers.

Beyond discrete reading lessons, we foster a culture of reading for pleasure. Children are regularly read to, have access to high-quality texts and are encouraged to explore books independently. We aim to ensure that every child leaves our school as a fluent, enthusiastic and thoughtful reader, equipped with the skills and confidence to succeed across the curriculum and beyond.

In Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2), spelling objectives are taught primarily through our systematic phonics programme and are incorporated within each year group's curriculum overview.

For Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6), spelling is taught through the statutory National Curriculum spelling objectives, which are outlined below. These objectives build upon pupils’ phonics knowledge and support the development of accurate spelling across the curriculum.