Reading

Reading at Christ Church, begins with the selection of high-quality texts, a rigorous ‘keep-up’ (supported by ‘catch-up’ where necessary) approach to teaching phonics and an immersion in a vocabulary rich environment from the moment children begin their journey with us. We believe that every child should leave Christ Church Primary School being able to read and should understand the importance of fluent, proficient reading as an important gateway to life-long learning, helping them to flourish in the fullest way possible and to becoming skilful communicators and writers, no matter what their starting point.

We follow the reading diet suggested by Christopher Such, identified in his book, ‘The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading’.  

Shared Reading: involves a teacher reading aloud to children with brief discussions of the text and will focus on the development of listening comprehension, word knowledge, background knowledge and reading enjoyment. The child’s central role is to listen carefully, try to derive meaning and to enjoy the process of doing both.

Fluency Practice: fluent reading involves accuracy, automaticity and prosody. It is the knitting together of phonics and comprehension. Fluency practice sessions take place through repeated oral reading of challenging, unmemorisable texts with modelling and guidance from a teacher.

Extended Reading: prolonged engagement with a longer text or extract.