Reading at St Augustine's

At St Augustine's we are working hard on developing our whole school approach to reading.

Pupils have lots of opportunities to explore reading in different contexts. Reading books in school are matched carefully to individual reading levels - irrespective of age, books are matched to the stage of reading development. Fastrack interventions are in place to support pupils who have entered the school at differing times through the school year and through their school career. Our deliberate and careful choice of Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme allows pupils to slot into the appropriate group and make progress at their level and speed. Fasttrack phonics allows pupils to narrow the achievement gap as quickly as possible. When pupils complete the phonics programme they move onto the structured reading scheme programme to continue to support their development. 

At St Augustine's we also prioritise the importance of reading books for pleasure. Every week, each child has the opportunity to visit our wonderful school library which has been developed over the past two years to support pupil's interests. Children are able to choose a book that interests them to share at home - fiction, a favourite non-fiction topic including dinosaurs (a big KS1 favourite) and the world wars which is a firm favourite in KS2. Pupils are able to suggest areas where they would like to have more books. We have also been able to extend our range of dual language books to support our families with reading together where English is an additional language for parents and children. 

To support our families with reading, we have started Reading Thursdays. Each class takes it in turn, so that approximately once a half term, parents can join their child in school to share reading time together at the start of the school day. This has been very popular with half our families joining us each week. 

We are a member of the Calderdale Reading Revolution to encourage all our children to read for pleasure as well as reading to develop their knowledge and understanding in all areas of life - truly Learning for Life!

Each class has a set of Repeated Reads that they enjoy reading time after time so that they can join in with them. These are all on the individual class pages and are also listed below. 

Want some ideas to support your child with reading at home? Click on your child's year group below to find a list of fantastic recommended reads for children to read alone or share with parents.