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Reading
"Pupils really enjoy reading, especially in the school's library and the inviting book corners in their classrooms. As they move through the school, their knowledge of genres and authors deepens." Ofsted 2025
At Bracken Leas, we believe reading is fundamental to every child’s educational development and we ensure that it is at the forefront of our curriculum, from Early Years through to Year 6. We believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves. We recognise that reading is beneficial for developing children’s emotional intelligence and supporting their mental wellbeing. We aim for all children to leave Bracken Leas as confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers; our reading curriculum strives to foster this and promote a lifelong love of reading. Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are committed to promoting a love for reading and ensuring that we are not only giving children opportunities to read in English lessons, but in the wider curriculum too.
As a ‘reading for pleasure’ school, we strive for our children to develop a love for reading through exposure to a wide range of genres and text types. We firmly believe that sharing books as a class is a fundamental aspect in developing children’s enjoyment for reading. Our selection of high-quality texts promotes a language-rich learning environment; encouraging children to actively discuss and critique literary devices.
Our reading curriculum is delivered as a multi-layered, progressive approach.
In Key Stage One, this is through our Trust wide scheme ‘Read Write Inc.’ which is a systematic synthetic phonics approach.
In Key Stage Two, we introduce extract-based comprehensions through the VIPERS skills.
Throughout the school, we encourage shared and guided reading, reading at home, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading and hearing quality texts read aloud every day.
