Reading

Here at Craven Primary Academy reading is at the heart of everything we do. It is our belief that every child can become a proficient reader. Children who are good at reading do more of it meaning they learn more and they expand their vocabulary, which allows them access to more learning. No matter who we are or our background, if we are able to read we will acquire knowledge.

Our Approach

We believe that it is the right of every child to experience a wide breadth of great literature and our reading curriculum is grounded around some wonderful core texts for each year group. These texts have been carefully selected to ensure that they increase in challenge term by term and year by year.  In addition, children will be exposed to a variety of non-fiction and poetry to ensure they get a good breadth of genres.  

All of our pupils have a daily reading session which focuses on developing their comprehension skills including clarifying unfamiliar vocabulary, retrieving information, making predictions and inference making. The goal of all reading is to comprehend and as a trust, we want to ensure that EVERY pupil leaves us well equipped with the skills and passion for reading that will equip them for their next stage in education.  

In addition, we also have an additional fluency session where our pupils can focus on developing their accuracy, automaticity and prosody. Reading Plus is a programme that has really enhanced this provision, providing our pupils with a wide suite of reading material which is matched perfectly to the individual. Most importantly- the children love it! 

Being a skilled reader is important but the WILL to read influences this skill and we are committed to igniting a love and passion for reading in all of our pupils. All of our classes have a daily storytime. Every year group has a list of Top 30 reads for fiction. It is really important to us that ALL of our pupils see themselves represented in books and many have been carefully chosen to reflect our wonderfully diverse Delta family. All of our pupils are also encouraged to choose and take home these books to share at home. At Craven, we do not accept that a pupil dislikes reading- we simply have not found them their ‘lightbulb’ book yet.  But we will.