Reading

At Little Mead we have a passion for reading from early reading until the children are ready for secondary school. 

We teach the fundamental skills of reading, alongside promoting a love of high quality, aspirational literature, through our whole class reading lessons (for years 2-6). During these lessons, we explore new texts developing pupils’ fluency, automaticity, exposure to new vocabulary and developing our comprehension skills so that children understand what they are reading. Throughout the academic year, children have regular opportunities to read a range of texts, including non-fiction and phonics, as well as experiencing structured reading lessons.  

For our pupils in Nursery, Reception and Year 1, their reading teaching is underpinned by phonetic teaching through our Understanding Letters and Sounds Programme. Pupils are taught grapheme-phoneme correspondences and common exception words for phonics phases 2-5. At Little Mead Primary Academy we promote a 'phonics first' approach and in both our guided reading sessions at school and in the books children take home, texts are very closely matched to a child's current phonics knowledge so that every child can experience real success in their reading. 

In these crucial early stages of reading, we primarily use books from Oxford Reading Press to ensure complete fidelity to the phonic progression we follow.  Once children progress beyond de-codable texts, they move onto our book scheme so that they can continue to progress in their decoding, fluency and comprehension skills to become avid, expert readers.  

All children have a reading book and reading record book which goes home on a daily basis. It is expected that all children will read at least four times a week at home and have this recorded in their record book.  

We promote a love of reading through displays of books, book corners, exposure to high quality texts during reading lessons, World Book Day and author visits.  

In year 1 – 6, our writing is also based around, and inspired by, the work of authors and high-quality books. Across the year, each year group studies 6 texts as part of their writing units. We also explore these in our writing lessons to allow us to investigate the plot, themes, characters, settings and key vocabulary.