Reading at St. Leonard's

Reading Intent

 Reading is at the centre of learning and opens many doors for our children.  Our aim is that all children are able to read fluently both for pleasure and to further their learning; to inspire children with a range of authors; to develop confident readers and enthusiastic storytellers with a lifelong love of reading. Reading throughout the curriculum stimulates their imagination and allows them access to new experiences and a range of interests. By the end of their time at St. Leonard’s, all children will be able to read widely, across the curriculum, for both information and pleasure.  Children will develop a lifelong love of reading through the quality texts shared in school.  We will also develop our cultural capital through the diversity of books that we share. 

How do we teach reading at St. Leonard's?

Children in Reception and Year 1 take part in three reading sessions per week using phonetically decodable books linked to our phonics programme, Little Wandle. There is a strong focus on decoding, prosody and comprehension within reading sessions and re-reading is introduced to promote the importance of this as a lifelong skill. The children will then bring these books home to complete a ‘celebratory read’ with their families.

During Year 2 we move from the Little Wandle programme onto colour banded books or level-appropriate books/texts. We continue with the same structure as Little Wandle guided reading sessions, but with books appropriate to the children’s current reading level. At this point, the children take home a colour-banded book.

In KS2, all children take part in whole class reading sessions during the week which consist of both the reading of and discussion of a text. During these reading sessions children will cover a breadth of texts - fiction, non-fiction, poetry, songs and picture books. Through guided sessions, the children are taught the skills of inference, inquiry and interpretation and they're then encouraged to apply this to a range of ‘real life’ texts’.

The children will bring home a colour-banded book until they're fluent and confident readers, who have a secure understanding of what they've read. Then, the children are invited to complete the '6 Book Reading Challenge', which is a set of high-quality texts chosen specifically for each year group. The children can choose the six they prefer and then read them over the year, either independently or with an adult. Once completed, the children are awarded a reading medal in our celebrations assembly. This is to encourage the children to read a range of texts from different authors - they never know what they'll like until they try it! The children are also encouraged to mix this challenge with books of their own choosing, either from home, their class libraries or from the school library. 

Reading for pleasure is paramount in our school. We want the children to love reading, because the more they love reading, the more they'll want to read and this will lead to a life-long love of reading and learning, where they'll have access to everything at their fingertips! We have dedicated reading for pleasure time in each class (DEAR time), book clubs, visits to the library, passionate teachers and enthusiastic librarians who share their love of books and reading with the children. 

Phonics

In school, we use 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' to deliver our phonics and early reading teaching. This programme runs from Nursery, when children explore the 'Foundations for Phonics' work, which is a pre-phonics and early language programme designed to build essential literacy skills before the children reach Reception. Once in Reception, the children begin learning graphemes and the related phonemes in order to start decoding and blending words. The entire programme runs throughout Reception and Year 1, however, some children will continue with the programme after this if they need it. 

Below is a breakdown of the progression in the programme for each year, but please click on the document at the bottom of the page if you'd like further information on what your child will be learning at each stage. 

If you would like to support your child's learning in phonics, we hold a parents' information evening each year where we share our teaching strategies and ideas of how you can help at home. Below is the last presentation we used in the meeting in October 2025.

There is also further guidance and support on the parents section of the Little Wandle website. Here you can find information on how phonics is taught, videos to support the children's pure sounds and videos of nursery rhymes. 

Below are the grapheme mats that we use in school to help the children with their reading and writing. These can also be used at home to practise recognition of graphemes and help with writing. 

Book Clubs

"Yes, it's Book Club!" a child shouts after lunch on a Friday. 

Book clubs in our school have quickly become one of the children's favourite sessions of the week. Each class dedicates a slot during the week to discuss the children's favourite books, recommended reads, new authors, hear author talks and take part in reading events. It's a really wonderful session where we inspire each other and become really excited about reading. 

We also have 'Special Event' book clubs, where parents are invited in to read with their children, or to share stories from their own childhoods. Our pupil librarians also visit other classes for book clubs to read stories, share books from the library or their own personal favourites too. 

The Library

We're incredibly proud of our school library. It's been open for 2 years and has quickly become the hub of reading in our school. It's used as a valuable resource for learning, but also as the heart of reading for pleasure within school. Please click below to explore and find out about the wonderful work that our school librarians do. 

We also welcome in Tamworth Library each year to launch the Summer Reading Challenge. So many of our pupils take part in this, and last year we came 4th overall in Tamworth! Congratulations to everyone who took part; we hope you found many wonderful stories on the shelves of our much-loved local library. 

How can you help your child with reading at home?

Studies have shown that reading at a young age can have a huge impact on future academic success. The most important thing you can do as parents to help your child with their learning is read to and with them. Read them stories, share non-fiction books, read poetry, magazines, recipe books etc. 

Once your children start to bring home a reading book from school, we ask that they read this to you at least three times a week. All of the children in school have a reading diary and we ask that you sign it each time they read with you. The children are awarded Dojos for reading three times a week.