Reading

At Nene Valley Primary School, we aim to inspire and motivate our pupils to become enthusiastic readers; pupils who read for pleasure and enjoyment and who also have the necessary skills to acquire knowledge and conduct research.

Through our curriculum and reading provision, the pupils have the opportunity to experience a wide range of high quality texts. Daily Guided Reading sessions provide opportunities for the pupils to explore texts in depth and further develop their comprehension skills. Each week there are also timetabled opportunities for independent quiet reading and reflection, modelled and shared reading of class texts with adults and paired reading with pupils in other classes.

We encourage the children to also read at home and provide a record book for this reading to be logged. Our ‘home’ reading books are colour coded to allow the children choice over what they read whilst ensuring that they are selecting texts at an appropriate level.  For help with Home Reading click on the link.  Through the reading curriculum, we aim to ensure that the pupils have the opportunity to experience a range of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

A celebratory ‘Book Week’, to coincide with ‘World Book Day’, is organised each year. During this week, a range of activities are planned to promote the pleasure of reading such as: book fairs, author visits and pyjama days.

Phonics Teaching



Phonics is a way of teaching children to read. They are taught how to:

• recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes;
• identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as ‘sh’  or ‘oo’;
• blend letter sounds together from left to right to make a word

As soon as the children start school in Reception, we begin teaching daily  phonics sessions, using 'Little Wandle' Scheme (based upon the Letters and Sounds document). These daily sessions continue throughout the Reception year and across Key Stage One. Our aim is for these sessions to be lively and interactive as well as multi-sensory.  For a video on the articulation of these sounds please follow this link: Articulation of Phonemes.