Reading Curriculum

At Springside, Reading is taught in a number of ways, with a range of systems and structures providing a high-quality Reading education across each Phase.

In Early Years and Key Stage One, Phonics is taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds, and Early Reading is taught through small, focused Reading Practice groups.

Shared/Guided Reading

Our Year 2 to Year 6 shared reading curriculum is built around a carefully sequenced range of high-quality, age appropriate texts using Literacy Counts’ Ready Steady Read Together units of learning. This resource provides dynamic and inclusive lessons that incorporate metacognitive strategies and showcase diverse literature from a range of exceptional authors. It aims to inspire children and their families to develop a lifelong love of reading for pleasure, knowledge and information.

We intend that all pupils from Year 2 to Year 6, regardless of need, ability or background, have the opportunity to meet and where possible exceed the National Curriculum expectations for reading comprehension. Ready Steady Read Together ensures that every pupil has access to high quality texts, enabling them to experience rich literature that develops fluency, vocabulary and deep understanding.

Through explicit teacher modelling of expression, pace, intonation and prosody, children learn how skilled readers bring meaning to a text and how these features support comprehension. Shared reading also provides regular opportunities for discussion, questioning, drama and exploration of language. These approaches deepen comprehension while strengthening oracy skills.

Crucially, our shared reading curriculum ensures that every child, regardless of their decoding ability, can access ambitious texts, engage meaningfully with literature and develop the habit of reading widely and often for both pleasure and learning.

Please read our Shared Reading Policy for further information to find out about the intent, implementation and impact.

Independent Reading

We use Accelerated Reader to provide a high-quality independent reading diet. Pupils take a multiple-choice test (STAR Test) using an iPad. This test provides clear data about pupils' Reading Age, Lexile Level (difficulty of text) and provide a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) score. Once pupils have a ZPD score, which is usually a range, they can then choose books within this range from the school AR Libraries. This ensures that books being read are exactly the correct difficulty for each child. Once the book is read, the pupils then take a Reading Quiz on the book to ensure that the pupil has understood the text. If pupils score appropriately on this quiz, they can then choose a new book from within their range. 

Accelerated Reader allows pupils to read "real" texts rather than a reading scheme, and allows free choice of text, whilst also ensuring pupils are reading appropriate texts which are within their Lexile level.