Reading at Bexton
Fluent readers. Deep understanding. A love of books for life.
Reading is the most important thing we teach. A child who reads well can access everything else in school; a child who does not is held back in every subject. That is why reading is the first priority in our curriculum and why we give it protected time every single day, from Nursery to Year 6.
Our reading curriculum has two phases, and both matter.
Learning to read: Nursery to Year 1
In Nursery, Reception and Year 1, our focus is on teaching children to read. We use Floppy's Phonics, a systematic synthetic phonics programme approved by the Department for Education.
Children are taught the sounds that letters make, and how to blend those sounds together to read words. The sounds are introduced in a carefully planned order, so that each new piece of knowledge builds on what came before. All the staff who teach phonics have been trained in the programme, so your child will get the same approach in every classroom and every group.
The books your child brings home are chosen to match the sounds they have been taught. This matters more than it might sound. If a book only contains sounds your child already knows, they can read it themselves, and success builds confidence. A book full of sounds they have not yet met teaches them to guess, which is a habit that is hard to break later.
In Nursery, children begin with listening, rhyme and talk, building the foundations that phonics depends on. Formal phonics teaching begins in the summer term, when children are ready for it.
If a child falls behind, we act quickly. We assess regularly and precisely, so we know exactly which sounds a child has not yet secured. Extra support is short, frequent and targeted at those specific sounds. Children who need this support continue to receive it beyond Year 1 for as long as it helps.
Reading to learn: Year 2 to Year 6
Once decoding is becoming automatic, the focus shifts. From Year 2, we teach reading through Ready Steady Read Together, a shared reading programme built around high-quality, ambitious texts.
Every child in the class reads the same text, whatever their reading level. This is deliberate. A child who cannot yet read a book independently can still think deeply about it when it is read with them and they deserve to meet the same literature as everyone else. Where children need help to access the text, we provide it through reading aloud, pre-taught vocabulary and practical supports, rather than by giving them an easier book.
In these lessons, teachers show children what skilled reading actually looks like. They read aloud, modelling expression, pace and intonation, and they think aloud so that children can see how a reader works out what a text means. Children discuss, question, predict, infer and justify their answers using evidence from the page. There is a great deal of talk in a reading lesson at Bexton and that is intentional: discussion is how comprehension deepens.
Reading is timetabled every day in a protected session, so it is never the lesson that gets squeezed when the morning runs over.
For children in Year 2 and Year 3 whose reading fluency is still developing, guided reading in smaller groups continues alongside this so that the foundations are fully secure before we rely on them.
Reading for pleasure
We want children to read because they want to, not only because they are asked to.
Every class has story time, when the teacher reads aloud a book chosen to widen children's experience of authors, genres and cultures beyond what they would pick for themselves. Our library is used throughout the week. Our pupil library monitors run events and competitions, recommend books to others and share stories with younger children in assemblies.
Across the year we hold author visits, book fairs, reading challenges and whole-school celebrations such as World Book Day.
How we check how your child is doing
Teachers assess reading constantly, mostly by listening to children read and talk about what they have read.
More formally, we use short standardised reading assessments each term from Year 1 to Year 6, which show us how your child is progressing and how they compare with children nationally. In phonics, we use the programme's own assessments to track exactly which sounds a child knows. All Year 1 children take the national Phonics Screening Check in the summer term and any child who does not meet the standard takes it again in Year 2.
Teachers also keep whole-class feedback records after lessons, noting what children found difficult and what to revisit. This shapes the next lesson rather than sitting in a file.
If we have any concern about your child's reading, we will tell you, and we will tell you what we are doing about it.
How you can help at home
Reading with your child at home makes a bigger difference than almost anything else you can do.
Listen to your child read from their school book, little and often. Ten minutes most days is worth more than an hour at the weekend.
Read to your child, whatever their age. Sharing a book that is beyond what they could read alone builds vocabulary and a love of stories.
Use the pure sounds we teach in phonics, rather than adding an "uh" to the end (so "mmm" rather than "muh"). We share guidance on this, and we are always happy to show you.
Talk about the book. What might happen next? Why did that character do that? What does that word mean?
Sign the reading diary, so we know reading is happening and can celebrate it.
If you would like advice specific to your child, please speak to their class teacher. We also run sessions for parents during the year on how reading is taught here.
Want to know more?
Our full Reading Handbook and Reading Curriculum Progression document set out in detail how reading is taught in each year group, including the sequence of phonics teaching and the reading skills developed from Nursery to Year 6. These are working documents for staff but we are very happy to share them. Please contact the school office if you would like to see them.
Reading is led by Mrs Day across the Infants and Mrs Yardley-Goldrick across the Juniors. Both are pleased to answer questions about reading at Bexton.