At St Stephen's we intend for our children to leave us as effective and confident readers and writers who have had experience of high-quality books throughout their time with us and are skilled and successful communicators.
Developing a love of reading, writing, story and communication is at the very heart of our curriculum. We use high quality picture books to inspire every term's learning, using the Power of Pictures methodology, these develop an understanding of narrative, the relationship between text and images, helps to explore the world around us, and ensures children hear, read and broaden their use of high-quality vocabulary.
Phonics, Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
We recognise that excellent reading skills are the key to accessing the whole curriculum and have an embedded and sequential approach to developing reading skills from Reception through to Year 6. This is central to a vibrant reading culture in which books and reading are celebrated in order to ensure our children become, and remain, enthusiastic, passionate and confident readers.
Alongside our phonics programme and the English National Curriculum, our reading curriculum offer includes the following:
Reading Book Provision
Decoding (1st read) is using phonemes to work out what the word says. What will this look like? |
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Fluency (2nd read) is reading the word without having to use blending to work out what the word says. What will this look like? |
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Prosody (3rd read) is being able to read for meaning and use expression to convey it. What will this like look? |
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Reading for pleasure
We promote the love of reading at St Stephen’s. The aim is that children know how it feels to be a fluent and accomplished reader. We want children to read for pleasure!
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We want children to love hearing stories, every class teacher reads daily to their class. We read a wide genre of texts and talk about them. |
In Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, we will send home bedtime story books which you can share together. Reading to your child will expand their vocabulary, support them in learning how to use expression and to understand the character, feelings and situations. We will change every time we change the reading book. | ![]() |
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All children have timetabled opportunities to use the library, with staffed small group sessions running four afternoons per week. The library is also open four times a week after school (3:20pm-4:30pm), so children and parents can come and visit, browse, read together and borrow more books. |
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Changes to the Statutory Reading Curriculum PPT.
Writing