Reading is an essential skill. We are committed to enabling our children to become life-long readers. At St Barnabas, we believe Reading should open up a world of possibility, intrigue and equip children with the skills they need in later life.

To be successful readers, children must develop capacities that become increasingly integrated as expertise develops:

1. Recognising words: At St. Barnabas, we use Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) as our chosen Phonics programme. The aim of ELS is ‘Getting all children to read well, quickly’. It teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words.

2. Fluency: As children become more expert at recognising words and building meaning from them, their reading begins to flow. As children progress through school, we reinforce this important sense of fluency through text experience and through rehearsed reading aloud.

3.  Building meaning from words: discussion of text, including vocabulary, sentence structure and authorial intentions.

As such our Reading lessons follow the following structures:

1. Fluency Read

2. Extended Read (increase Reading experience)

3. Close Read (discuss texts in depth)

4. Layered Read (an introduction to whole class reading for Year 1)

At St Barnabas, we believe that regular reading at home is an important tool in developing reading skills. Children are given decodable/levelled books to take home as well as an opportunity to take books home from our fantastic library!