English Reading Subject Leader: Mr W Forder
Reading is one of the most important life skills. It promotes achievement and ensures access to the breadth of the curriculum. We teach our pupils to extend their concepts and find information, helping them to learn more when reading.
Intent
At Whitehill Primary School, our intent for reading is to develop confident, enthusiastic, and independent readers who enjoy and engage with a wide range of high-quality texts. We aim to ensure that pupils acquire strong decoding skills, fluency, and comprehension abilities, enabling them to access and understand increasingly challenging material across all subjects.
Our reading curriculum is designed to build progressively on pupils’ skills from the Early Years Foundation Stage onwards. In EYFS and Key Stage 1, children acquire early reading through the Jolly Phonics programme and daily structured phonics activities, developing essential decoding skills that form the foundation for lifelong reading. Pupils are supported to read aloud with fluency and expression, and paired or small-group reading strategies are used to promote confidence, auditory awareness, and enjoyment.
As pupils progress through Key Stages 1 and 2, they are exposed to a rich and diverse range of texts, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and culturally diverse literature. Reading lessons develop key comprehension skills such as retrieval, inference, prediction, and summarising, ensuring that pupils can interpret, analyse, and evaluate texts independently. Lessons are designed to promote reading for pleasure, including story time, booktalk, and opportunities for pupils to select and discuss texts they enjoy.
Our curriculum also embeds reading within wider learning, ensuring that texts support cross-curricular connections and provide meaningful contexts for developing understanding. Through this approach, pupils gain a broad appreciation of literature, develop a wide-ranging vocabulary, and cultivate critical thinking skills.
By the end of their primary education, Whitehill pupils will be fluent, confident readers who can engage with complex texts with understanding and enjoyment, ready to continue their reading journey at secondary school and beyond.
Implementation
At Whitehill, reading is taught through a carefully sequenced and progressive curriculum designed to build fluency, comprehension, and reading for pleasure. In EYFS and Key Stage 1, phonics is taught daily using the Little Wandle programme, supporting early decoding skills. Reading lessons focus on both fluency and comprehension, with structured activities such as paired reading, group reading, and choral reading to ensure all pupils access age-appropriate texts.
As pupils progress through Key Stage 2, reading lessons develop higher-order comprehension skills including retrieval, inference, prediction, and summarising. Texts are selected to reflect a wide range of genres, cultures, and themes, providing pupils with both challenge and engagement. Cross-curricular links are embedded to ensure that reading supports learning across subjects.
Assessment of reading is ongoing. Teachers use formal tools such as NTS reading assessments and informal observations of reading fluency and comprehension to inform planning and differentiation. Target Tracker is used three times per year to monitor progress, identify areas of strength and development, and ensure that pupils are making expected or accelerated progress. Teachers participate in moderation meetings to discuss assessments and secure consistency across year groups.
The curriculum is supported by regular monitoring by the English lead and leadership team, including book looks, lesson observations, pupil voice, and learning walks, which ensures fidelity to the curriculum and identifies areas for further support or enhancement.
Impact
By the end of each key stage, pupils will be confident, fluent readers capable of engaging with a wide range of texts independently and for pleasure. They will have developed strong comprehension skills, a broad vocabulary, and the ability to interpret, analyse, and evaluate texts. Reading assessment data, teacher judgments, and pupil feedback will demonstrate clear progress across key reading objectives.
Regular monitoring ensures that gaps are addressed promptly, and interventions are tailored to meet individual needs. Pupils will leave Whitehill prepared for the reading demands of secondary education and beyond, with a lifelong love of reading and the skills to access the wider curriculum successfully.
Pupil progress in reading is closely monitored using Target Tracker three times per year, alongside NTS reading assessments and reading fluency checks. Teachers use this information, combined with their professional knowledge, to make informed judgments about each child’s progress. In-house moderation meetings further support consistency and accuracy in assessment. The English lead and leadership team monitor the effectiveness of reading teaching through book looks, lesson observations, pupil voice, and learning walks, enabling timely adjustments to ensure all pupils make strong progress.
English Reading in Each Stage
Children engage in daily phonics and early reading activities, accessing age-appropriate texts including nursery rhymes, stories, poems, and non-fiction. Reading for pleasure and fluency is developed through storytime, 1:1 reading, and role play.
Recommended Books for Reception
For more recommended reading, please visit the EYFS Class page
To read our Phonics and Early Reading Policy, please visit the policy page.
Pupils continue phonics-based reading, building decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills. Paired reading, choral reading, and a range of texts support reading confidence. Reading is linked to writing and exposes children to diverse cultures and genres.
Click the links below to view recommended texts for year 1 and year 2:
Recommended Texts for Year One
Recommended Texts for Year Two
Lower Key Stage 2: Pupils develop comprehension skills such as inference, summarising, and explanation. Reading lessons focus on vocabulary, text structure, and discussion. Independent reading is encouraged and linked to cross-curricular topics.
Upper Key Stage 2: Pupils engage with increasingly complex texts, deepening critical thinking and evaluative skills. Reading for pleasure is reinforced through Accelerated Reader, booktalk, and independent choice. Pupils are prepared for secondary-level reading demands.
Click the links below to view recommended texts for year 3-6:
Recommended Texts for Year Three
Recommended Texts for Year Four
Recommended Texts for Year Five
Recommended Texts for Year Six
English Reading Progression
Reading Vipers is our toolkit for teaching the range of reading skills needed. It enables the identification of the key areas of reading and helps to give us prompts and questions to use in order to develop a range of reading strategies. As your child becomes a more fluent reader, the Vipers areas of reading will help to continue to challenge and teach a range of reading skills.
When progressing, young readers will, at a particular stage, successfully make the leap into their first chapter of books. Please click here to help pupils pick a selection of short, illustrated chapter books that are perfect for children launching into independent reading.
Assessments
Assessments are used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it. This is evaluated daily within the class to identify children needing ‘Keep-up support’. Each week teachers use ‘Review lessons’ to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.
Every six weeks teachers will perform a ‘summative assessment’ to assess progress, identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, identify any children needing additional support and plan the ‘Keep-up support’ that they need.
Through the Senior Leadership Team and the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, teachers will be able to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and offer any additional support needed.
Children in Year 1 will sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check will re-sit this in Year 2.
Ongoing assessments will continue for children in years 2 to 6 through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.
Inclusion & Equal Opportunities
At Whitehill, we believe that inclusion and equal rights are key to providing a safe place where children can thrive and learn. As such, the English curriculum has been designed to give teachers much more ownership of their pupil’s learning. The aim of this is to allow teachers to select aspects of the curriculum, not only that their pupils enjoy, but which will make them feel included in the Whitehill family. Teachers have the freedom to select books that match the demographic of their class so that pupils feel welcome. This is not only linked to books. The writing learning journeys can be developed based around topics/issues both locally, nationally and internationally. This will provide scope across the curriculum for pupils to engage in activities that they can feel a part of.
Further to this, the curriculum is designed to support all children in their learning. The English curriculum is aimed at providing all pupils with the confidence and ability to make excellent progress. The use of multi-sensory techniques will be embedded into lessons to support the SEN children within the school whilst the greater depth children will be challenged and extended through higher order thinking when reflecting on their own work and writing styles.
Home Learning
As a parent, you are your child’s first and most important teacher. When you help your child learn to read, you are opening the door to a world of books and learning.
Reading aloud to children is the best way to get them interested in reading. Before long they will grow to love stories and books. Eventually, they will want to read on their own.
Parental involvement is an essential aspect to English, especially for the early acquisition of reading. It is crucial that the school and parents work together in order to support the pupils at Whitehill. In order to achieve this, there is an expectation that teachers will check the contact books of pupils within school. There is also the expectation that parents will read with their children.Furthermore, we would like to invite parents into school to do “reading events”. This will allow parents to come into school to share some of the class’s story but also to read with their children in the school environment. We will also run workshops with parents to show ways of supporting and developing reading at home.
With the help of parents, children can learn how to read and can practise reading until they can read for their own enjoyment. Then they will have a whole world of information and knowledge at their fingertips!
Reading can be a family activity. Spending time with word games, stories, and books will help your child to:
• gather information and learn about the world
• learn how stories and books work – that they have beginnings, endings, characters, and themes
• build a rich vocabulary by reading and talking about new words
• learn how to listen and how think
• learn the sounds of language and language patterns
• fall in love with booksIt’s natural to want to compare your child’s reading abilities with those of other children of the same age, but not all children develop reading skills at the same pace.
What’s important is that you are aware of your child’s reading level so that you can choose books and activities that will help him or her improve. Use the tips in this guide and work with your child’s teacher and others to improve your child’s reading skills.