Reading at St Michael’s CE Primary School

Intent

At St Michael’s, we strive to do our best and are committed to developing a love of reading in every child. We believe that reading is the key to unlocking the wider curriculum and a vital life skill that opens doors to future learning, creativity, and wellbeing.

Our aim is to ensure all children:

• Become confident, fluent, and independent readers.

• Develop a deep understanding and enjoyment of a wide range of texts across all genres.

• Build strong foundations in early reading through a consistent and engaging approach to phonics.

• Are equipped with comprehension skills that help them understand, analyse and enjoy what they read.

• Experience high-quality texts that reflect our school values, promote diversity, and are relevant to our community and world.

Implementation

Phonics (Supersonic Phonic Friends)

We use the Supersonic Phonic Friends scheme to deliver daily, systematic and engaging phonics lessons from the start of Reception. This validated scheme is designed to be fun, consistent and interactive, with a strong focus on developing accurate decoding, blending, and segmenting skills.

• Phonics is taught daily from Reception to Year 2, with additional support provided for any children who need to continue phonics beyond this.

• Lessons are fast-paced, active, and multi-sensory to appeal to a wide range of learning styles.

• Regular assessment ensures that children are progressing and interventions are put in place swiftly if needed.

• Children take home fully decodable books that match their phonics phase to support fluency and confidence.

Guided Reading (VIPERS)

From Year 2 onwards, we use the VIPERS approach (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, and Summarising/Sequencing) to explicitly teach reading comprehension skills.

• Texts are carefully selected to match age, reading level and the needs of our school demographic. These include modern fiction, classic literature, non-fiction, poetry and culturally diverse texts.

• Guided Reading sessions are timetabled daily and taught in small groups or whole class formats depending on the age group and focus.

• Teachers use high-quality questioning and model reading behaviours to develop deep thinking and discussion.

• Vocabulary is explicitly taught and revisited to help children develop strong language comprehension.

• Across the curriculum, reading is embedded through the use of high-quality texts in subjects such as history, science and RE.

Impact

The impact of our reading and phonics curriculum is that:

• Children learn to read fluently and with enjoyment, accessing books that inspire, challenge and reflect their world.

• Pupils develop strong comprehension skills, enabling them to engage confidently with a wide range of texts.

• Reading is celebrated as a central part of our school culture, and children are motivated to read for pleasure at school and at home.

• Children talk about books enthusiastically, make thoughtful predictions, and explain their thinking using the language of reading.

• By the end of Key Stage 2, children are ready to meet the demands of secondary school reading and have a lifelong love of reading.

Regular assessment, including phonics tracking, reading fluency checks, and comprehension tasks, ensures we closely monitor progress and provide tailored support where needed. We celebrate reading through book events, author visits, and by creating inviting reading spaces across the school.