During their time at St Michael's, we nurture our children to give them a love of reading. Our aim is that children leave us in Year 6 being fluent, accurate readers with strong comprehension skills. We believe that working in partnership with our families is the best way to achieve that.

What we ask of our families:

Read to you child and keep going all the way through school. Enjoy books, poems, newspapers, comics and magazines together. Here is some more helpful information from Book Trust. https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/tips-and-advice/reading-tips/

Once your child has a reading book, hear them read at least three times a week.

This is the best way to support your child's learning. It's a fact that children who read more do better at school. Here is the evidence to prove it. https://readingagency.org.uk/about/impact/002-reading-facts-1/

Phonics

At St Michael's our children learn to read using a phonics first approach. Our phonics scheme is Read Write Inc. Helping your child to learn to read and also write their phonics sounds is a fantastic way to support your child. This short video clips shares all the sounds that your child will learn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXcabDUg7Q

Some words are not phonically decodable. In our phonics scheme, we call these RED words. For instance, said, they, you. As your child moves through school, the teachers will guide you which red words your child should be learning to read and spell.

Accelerated Reader

As children become confident readers, they move onto our Accelerated Reader Programme. Our children enjoy Accelerated Reader because it uses real books and gives them opportunities to develop an interest in different authors or genres. Once a child has read a book, they take a quiz on it and earn points. Our teachers are able to see how well a child has understood the book from their answers.

Reading for Pleasure

All St Michael's children have a reading for pleasure text. This text could be from their class library area where topics children are learning about are celebrated and promoted. It may be from our school library or could simply be from home. Reading for pleasure texts can be any type of text that the child chooses. It can be a text that is easy but enjoyable to read or a text which challenges and is read with support.