Reading Aims

At Steyning C of E Primary, it is our intention to provide pupils with a high-quality education in reading, which will feed imagination and curiosity; develop knowledge of the world and instil the skills and love of reading necessary to succeed in school and later on in life.

Teaching in EYFS will concentrate on language development, developing phonological awareness and the teaching of phonics. Key stage 1 will build upon the work from the EYFS, introducing new GPC (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence) as well as working towards recognising words on sight in order to build fluency. Alongside this, comprehension is broken down into small steps and develops throughout KS1 and KS2.

We aim to develop fluent, confident and independent readers through a structured focus on word, sentence and text level knowledge.  We strive to encourage children to become enthusiastic and reflective readers by teaching them to understand and respond to a variety of texts. We give children the confidence to read aloud with expression and with clarity.  Develop and extend the children’s vocabulary through shared and guided reading and to help children to enjoy reading and recognise its value. We are extremely lucky to have an outstanding ‘Reading Army’ which consists of over 30 volunteers from the community who give up their time to help spread the love for reading and reading for pleasure at SPS. 

Reading Values

LOVE – We show love by becoming readers who have a love for reading, whether it is chapter books, graphic novels, picture books or non-fiction.

HAPPY – We show happiness by finding time every day to stop what we are doing and take the time to lose ourselves in the magical world of books.

RESPECT – We show respect by caring for the books in our school and our wonderful school library.

COLLABORATIVE – We show that we are collaborative by taking part in whole class guided reading. We share stories as a class, share our views and opinions and enjoy book themed days and working with visiting authors.

CURIOUS – We show our curiosity by being eager to learn about new authors, genres and text types. We are exposed to quality rich texts which challenge and engage!

BRAVE – We show bravery by trying new books, we explore strategies to help us develop into confident readers, we challenge ourselves and share our reading experiences with others.

Click here to view whole school Vision & Values.

Click here for government guidance on how parents can support children to read