English Reading
Hello! I am Mrs Douglas and I am very passionate about everything to do with books and reading. There is nothing more relaxing that sitting back and diving into a good book…once hooked, there’s not much that distracts me! I love to see children reading for pleasure and sharing in and conversing about the books they have read. There is a real reading buzz around Netherton Junior & Infant School, where pupils can find a vast range of books to choose from all around the school.
Intent – Why is reading so important for our pupil’s at Netherton?
At Netherton Junior and Infant School, we are passionate about providing our children with a rich reading diet. We intend to encourage all children to explore a wide range of texts across fiction, non-fiction and poetry, to further develop their knowledge of themselves and the world within which they live. We also aim for them to read a variety of genres and different authors, from ‘golden oldies’ to ‘new and bold’ books, to grow their reading repertoire. We strive to understand the individual reader identities of our pupils, and we use this knowledge to ensure that the books on our shelves cater for their reading preferences, to enable us to keep their reading lights switched on.
Language and Comprehension:
We have chosen to use a range of books in our whole class reading lessons in order to immerse the children in a variety of texts. We strive to instil a passion for discovery, exploration and reflection through our reading curriculum, and we hope that the texts that we plan to use, evoke emotion and generate thought provoking, powerful discussions and that this in turn will improve the children’s comprehension skills. We aim for the children to acquire new language, from listening to, reading and discussing such a wide range of texts. We believe at Netherton, that every child should have a copy of the whole class book to share and discuss with a partner in the weekly comprehension sessions. They will also use the copies to follow along when the teacher models reading with prosody and fluency.
Reading for Pleasure:
Reading is at the heart of our school. We are committed to promoting reading for enjoyment, and we aim to do this through modelling ourselves as readers. Staff at Netherton are committed readers and model reading for pleasure by having our own staff library area where we regularly swap books and offer suggestions to up and coming good reads. We also strive to develop our knowledge of children’s literature, so that we can tailor our curriculum accordingly and make personalised text recommendations depending on the readers preference we find in our classrooms each year.
End Goal:
We understand the importance of reading for learning and progress across the curriculum; therefore, we intend for our children to become confident, fluent readers, with good comprehension by the end of their primary school careers. Furthermore, we want all children at our school to leave with a thirst for books so that they develop the habit of reading widely and often and go on to become lifelong readers.
The Reading Framework (2023) provides further information about the governments intentions surrounding reading at primary school level.
Implementation of Early Reading and Phonics. 
Early reading is key! Words children will have hear by the age of 5:
Never read to – 4662 words
Read to 1 -2 times a week – 63,570 words
Read to 3 – 5 times a week – 169,520 words
Daily reading – 296, 660 words
Five books a day – 1,483,300 words
When moving into Early Years 2, they take on a more formal program of study which has been validated by the DFE. The synthetic phonics scheme we have chosen for our pupils at Netherton is Little Wandle. The sounds are taught daily across EY2 and Y1 with fully trained members of staff. The phonics sessions are then complemented by three reading sessions a week, again by fully trained staff. The first reading session focuses upon decoding the words in the book. The book will match the phonic sounds taught that week. The second session, still using the same book, focuses upon prosody. Prosody is the teaching of intonation in language and the patterns of rhythm used with a sentence. Children will learn to emphasis certain words to express meaning. The third session of reading then focuses upon the child’s comprehension skill when they have fully understood all new words and meanings. On the Friday, the child than takes their book home and celebrates their achievements at home with parents. The book is then returned on the Monday for the teaching cycle to start again.
Children are assessed half termly for progress and any children that have fallen behind (due to missed sessions) are quickly caught up using the keep up sessions. Children then attend booster sessions to ensure they remain on track with the Little Wandle scheme of learning.
Any children that fall behind and are not on track in Y2 and KS2 are supported by material from the Little Wandle to ensure consistency throughout the school.
Please find below further links to the Little Wandle website and school policy for Little Wandle.
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
LS-Phonics-and-early-reading-policy- Netherton
By the end of Year 1 all children will be expected to succeed in passing their statutory Phonics Screening Check. This is set by the government and intends that all children have a solid understanding of the grapheme and phoneme correspondence (GPC) and are confident at reading unfamiliar words and have the skills to do so.
Implementation of Whole Class Reading at Netherton.
At Netherton we have implemented a whole class reading strategy from Y2 to Y6 that enables our readers to become more fluent and expressive as they build upon their phonic knowledge. All children are exposed to that high quality prosody and teacher modelling that encourages our pupils to read with automaticity and language knowledge.
A whole class text/extract is chosen by the teacher on a weekly basis so the children are exposed to a wide range of texts they themselves may not have chosen to read therefore widening the reading preference of our pupils at Netherton. Responding to the text is immediate and any vocabulary can be explored within the class through the three weekly 25 minute sessions timetabled. Written responses are implemented twice weekly with the first session focused solely upon quality discussions and reading fluency.
If readers do fall behind with their reading fluency and comprehension, we have implemented a new reading intervention which follows The Herts For Learning Reading Fluency strategy and YARK assessments. This has proved very successful with children making an average of 2 years reading age progress in the 8 weeks it was delivered in Spring 24 25. More information on the program can be found in the link below.
https://www.hfleducation.org/reading-fluency
Further information on staff training and implementation of reading at Netherton Junior Infant School can be found on the staff INSET Day training Power Point. I have also taken guidance from supporting documents provided by Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in improving Literacy across KS1 and KS2. Key messages have been implemented into our English policy to ensure consistency and teaching of high quality reading across all ages at Netherton.
Literacy_KS1_Guidance_Report_2020
EEF-Improving-literacy-in-key-stage-2-report-Second-edition (2)
Journey of a reader through Netherton J&I School
In EY1 Children are engaged with learning about sounds and listening out for words that have rhyme. They move on to oral segmenting and blending before moving up to EY2.
In EY2, children begin their first sessions in the Little Wandle program of study and work through the scheme to be confident at segmenting and blending. The children are regularly assessed using heat maps which identify gaps quickly. Children are then caught up quickly and continue to progress. Children enjoy a good diet of story time and reading books in their provision.
In Year 1, Children continue to access Little Wandle and continue to make progress to become confident readers enabling them to pass the statutory phonics screening checks in June. Children are read to everyday using a whole class reading book which the children wouldn’t normally be able to read by themselves.
In Year 2, Children move towards the last phase of Little Wandles called Bridge to Spelling. Children that have not yet passed their phonic screening checks, continue to access the program at their level of need and receive rapid catch up intervention. Children, also enjoy a class story time book which is read every day. Year 2 children then move onto the whole class reading strategy, once they are confident readers and are able to blend with fluency. The strategy focuses upon building that automaticity and prosody when reading and builds reading beyond word recognition and decoding. Depending on the cohort, this usually takes place in the spring term.
KS2 children, Children are provided with an extract/text which they focus upon all week in three 25 minute sessions. The first session focusing upon building that language knowledge and prosody and then quickly moving onto quick fire retrieval questions and vocabulary understanding in the second session. The third session focuses upon the strands that the cohort are working on to become more skilled readers which could be linked to inference, summarising, using the evidence withing the text and recoding down their answers to their best ability. All classes then use a whole class book for reading for pleasure which takes place daily for 15 minutes.
Meet the Reading Leaders and Reading Squad at Netherton!
The Reading Leaders (Y6) and Reading Squad (Y5) are responsible for all things to do with books! From running events such as our recent Scholastic Book Fair to organising the pop up book corners. The biggest responsibility they have is to hear other readers throughout school read three times a week for ten minutes at the end of the school day.
We have dedicated Book Club time, where children can listen to a story being shared or discussed by fellow peers or adults in their class. Children can take part in book talks and we are currently building our classroom book stores up so children have multiple copies of the same book so children can share and delight in story time sessions. To capture the love of reading for pleasure and to share this enthusiasm, each class has a journal that goes home with a child once they have read a book of their choice they then summarise the book and complete a review that can be shared with their peers. It has had a huge impact so far and the children are all eager to take it home and add their own footprint to it. We also have golden mystery books to choose from and a pupil that has shown super effort with their whole class reading sessions will be selected each week to unwrap the surprise book of the week! Here are some children sharing and showing they love reading for pleasure!
Netherton School Library
At Netherton we are very lucky to have our own unique library. We also have plenty of pop up library areas around school that provide further books that support all our reader identities. All pupils love going to the library on a weekly basis to change their book. The library is well stocked and our pupils have a huge involvement when choosing the books that we need to purchase through pupil voice and class discussions. To ignite that love for reading, we have multiple copies of the same book so children can share and talk about the books with their friends. Mrs Douglas keeps abreast with the popular reads and on trend authors so that our library is kept up-to-date and that passion for reading keeps growing.
Please see below our English Policy which incorporates reading across Netherton.
Netherton English Policy 2024 26
Please see below our supporting documents and reading spine to further embed our reading curriculum at Netherton Junior Infant School.
Netherton Reading Progression Map 2025 2026
At Netherton we encourage parents to share in our vision and hold a school expectation that children should be heard read at least three times in the week. To support home reading we provide the children with a rich and varied choice of texts from the classic traditional tales, adventure and sci-fi novels to the most up-to-date non-fiction books. Children are encouraged to chose an alternative text weekly so they don’t just focus upon fiction or vice versa this is supported and recorded by the classroom TSA.
Here are some valuable reading and comprehension questions you could ask your child whilst listening to them read.
Guided reading questions for parents
Recommended reads per year group and further parent support links
https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/free-ebooks/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/bedtime-stories
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/reception/
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/year-1/
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/year-2/
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/year-3/
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/year-4/
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/year-5/
https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/recommended-reads/year-6/
reading-with-your-child-booklet-for-parents
bookstart-reading-with-your-child-3-4-english
Impact at Netherton.
We understand the importance of reading for learning and progress across the curriculum; therefore , we intend for our children to become confident, fluent readers, with good comprehension by the end of their primary school careers. Furthermore, we want all children at our school to leave with a thirst for books so that they can go on to become readers.
There is always scope to improve, reflect and move forward with each cohort being unique. We will always strive to ensure that all children leave high school ready and are equipped with the reading skills that they need to progress and therefore we always review, with our governing body, the impact our school has had on our learners at Netherton. The data at the end of KS2 24 25, showed us that we needed to reflect and change the way in which we deliver reading which we have done swiftly. Having joined the Outwood English Hub Reading Fluency Program and visited many schools, we are excited to see the impact of the new reading strategy implemented this academic year. Pupils have already provided a positive response to the new delivery with one pupil in Year 5 stating that he now enjoys his comprehension sessions and looks forward to unpicking the text and responding.