Who can I speak to about Reading? Your child’s class teacher will be able to answer any questions about your child’s reading. You can also speak to our Reading Leader Mr Clark. You can find detailed information in our English Policy above, and a summary below.

Reading at Studley St Mary's 

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. Our aim is that the children leave us as being confident in selecting and reading a wide range of material and enjoy reading for pleasure. 

Reading is taught through a daily reading lesson which includes: 

- How to read fluently 

- Understanding vocabulary 

- Key skills of retrieval, inference, prediction, summarising, making links.

-Modelled answering of questions 

In addition to the daily reading lesson children also: 

- read for pleasure every day

- story time daily

- regular discussion about books, poetry and stories. 

- phonics sessions for those children who need it 

- quality reading materials in other curriculum areas 

Reading Ambassadors 

We have a great team of reading ambassadors who promote a love of reading around school. They have organised a book bank and regularly recommend books to their peers. In the summer term they visit the infant school to share books with the Year 2 pupils before they join us in September. 

Early Reading including Phonics 

It is vital that that children learn to read fluently as quickly as possible and so the teaching of phonics is our highest priority. Studley St Mary's uses the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds as its programme, validated by the DfE to deliver effective and systematic, synthetic phonics. 

Information for parents 

The teaching of high-quality phonics underpins the core skills of both reading and writing.  Phonics is taught in small groups through a structured, fun, interactive programme which follows the progression of “Little Wandle”. Children are taught how to segment and blend words for both reading and writing. From an early age, children use the correct terminology such as phoneme, grapheme, digraph, split digraph.  Please follow this link to the 'Little Wandle' website which gives more information and support for parents. This includes videos on how to pronounce the sounds your child will be learning. 

Some of our children , who for various reasons might not have passed the Phonics Screening Test (taken by all pupils in Year 1), might need to receive continued targeted phonics support (Rapid Catch Up) to help them with both their reading and writing. 

Information sessions are held at the beginning of Autumn Term, and again at the beginning of the Spring Term, for parents/carers  to show how we teach phonics and to demonstrate how children can be supported at home with their learning of phonics. 

Reading in KS2

Whole class reading is practised in English lessons and complex texts are chosen, with elements that will challenge readers at all abilities within each class. Children are taught specific fluency skills at least twice a week, as well as comprehension skills across a range of texts. Children with additional needs, disabilities and/or English as an additional language are supported in various ways to optimise their exposure to these rich and challenging texts, such as pre teaching and the use of audio books. 

For independent and home reading, we encourage the use of the 95% rule. If a child can read 95% of the words on a page (making approximately one mistake/difficulty on one word per paragraph). This allows parents and carers to identify any text, either paper, or online, that their child shows an interest in reading. Each classroom has a range of books that the children can take home, and children are encouraged to select appropriately challenging books.

Children who are completing the Little Wandle Rapid Catch Up Programme are given an appropriate reading book to practice, but are encouraged to access other texts which take their interests. 

We encourage parents and carers to:

Read to your child. 

Read to your child, and let them read the same page back to you.

Have your child read to you.

Ask your child questions after they have read to you. 

The information from our parent information afternoon can be found below. 

Our school is fully committed to encouraging all children to read outside of school. We have set up a number of initiatives to achieve this: 

 Rewarding children who read outside at home

• Enlisting volunteers to hear readers in school for whom reading at home is difficult 
• Parent and child after-school reading events 

The Reading Book Suggestions below are suggestions of books that can be read at home and/or as a 'free read' choice that are suitable for your child's reading age. If you need any other help and suggestions of books suitable for your child please speak to our Reading Lead, Miss Barney.

Library

Our library was opened in October 2024 by the author Rob Biddulph. The majority of the books were funded through Stratford Literature Festival's build a library campaign. Children have free access to our school library throughout the week as a quite space to spend their lunchtime or to just collect a book they would like to take home. The library is run by our reading ambassadors, who support children in selecting books and as well as monitor our stock. 

Children who would like to join our library are asked to fill out an application form, which can be downloaded below. 

Each class also visit Studley Library throughout the year.