Reading at St Joseph's.

Whether it be the word of God, a topic-related text or reading for pleasure, the teaching of reading is a vital element of how we develop confident, knowledgeable and literate life-long learners.

Phonics Scheme

At St Joseph's, we follow Essential Letters and Sounds as our phonics scheme.   Essential Letters and Sounds is a Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme, validated by the Department for Education.  By distilling Letters and Sounds to its purest form, we can ensure every phonics lesson is taught to the highest standard. Essential Letters and Sounds enables all children to read well quickly. Our phonetically decodable books are all aligned to the phonics taught in Essential Letters and Sounds.

Reading Comprehension

When children are able to decode texts using their phonics skills and have a good fluency, then we begin to teach them formal reading comprehension skills.

At St. Joseph's each skill is taught via 'VIPERS', which stands for the following:

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequencing/Summarising.

Children will have the opportunity to practise their reading comprehension across a range of subjects and genres. Reading lessons are explicitly timetabled and adaptations are made to meet the individual needs of each child. 

Reading Books

For pupils in Reception and Year 1, they will have reading books matched to their phonic ability and the phonics being taught in class.  This continues for any pupil in Year 2, who continues to require phonics teaching.  From Year 2 onwards, pupils read books that are banded into different levels of content and difficulty of words.