Reading At Priestmead

​At Priestmead Primary School, we are always striving to promote reading for pleasure. Thanks to our Priestmead team, our library is the perfect place to dive into a book. Overall, our aim is to develop our students into able readers who have the skills they need to read independently by the time they leave us and who read books because they love to! If we can achieve that, we know we’ll have made a holistic difference to their life-long learning.

Pupils are encouraged to read for pleasure and develop a life-long love of reading through practices such as:  reading partners, quiet reading time, engaging story times, reading challenges and working through recommend reads for their year groups (see the Reading Tube Maps towards the bottom of this page) .  

To promote a love of reading at Priestmead, we:

• Create class libraries (book corners) which are inviting, well-organised and contain a range of quality texts

• Have daily story time sessions (class readers)

• Encourage author visits

• Celebrate reading with awards in our celebration assemblies

• Provide weekly timetabled library sessions 

• Work closely with the local library (Kenton Library) and Harrow Library Services

• Hold regular parent workshops

• Set reading challenges

• Provide a ‘book swap shop’ in the summer term. 

In Early Years, pupils learn to read accurately and fluently through daily phonics in reception and year 1, following the programme, Read, Write, Inc. They read regularly to adults through Reading Practice sessions using RWI decodable books and continue to develop their confidence in reading through repeated practice of the books at home. These reading sessions are designed to support children develop their fluency, prosody and comprehension. Children are also exposed to daily phonics, story time, focused story time reading sessions and opportunities for additional reading/phonics throughout the school day. 

From years 3-6, children read as a whole class every day during English reading lessons (Destiantion Reader). Reading and writing are both taught using teaching sequences which involve choral reading as well as opportunities for the teacher to read aloud modelling expressive reading and for individual children to read aloud to develop their oracy skills and confidence. 

Pupils’ comprehension skills are formally assessed each term and statutory assessments take place in Reception, year 2 and year 6. Any pupil who is not meeting age related expectations is support through additional sessions, 1:1 reading or phonics, small group reading/phonics and booster classes. Throughout English sessions, pupils have many opportunities to learn and develop their reading skills and these are practiced and apply in other areas of the curriculum too.