We prioritise reading because it is an essential, enabling competence.
Being taught and supported to read well is part of our pupil entitlement. We believe, that aside from keeping our pupils safe, it’s the most important thing that we do.
Being able to read unlocks access to the wider school curriculum. Being able to read well mean that a young person has more choice and agency. Teaching pupils to read well is part of an education that prioritises fairness and social equity.
- Our school has a reading lead
- Our teachers and support staff are trained in teaching reading
- We assess pupils’ reading ages so we know when pupils might need more support
- We have embedded a strong culture of reading, including reading for pleasure
Our teaching approach
- We teach reading using a systematic synthetic phonics approach (SSP)
- This involves teaching pupils the relationship between sounds and letters in a systematic way so they can decode words effectively.
- We include rich, literary texts in our curriculum, increasing in complexity as pupils progress. Pupils will be immersed in stories, poems and wider reading from a young age.
- We explicitly teach and support reading fluency so that pupils can read confidently, quickly and accurately
- We use high quality interventions to support pupils to keep up and make progress
How can parents support reading?
- Encourage your child to read. We’d suggest at least 20 minutes a day.
- Both fiction and non-fiction texts are appropriate. This might be books, including graphic novels, magazines, newspapers or digital texts.
- Talk to your child about what they’re reading.
- Encourage your child to borrow books from the school library.
- Get your child had a library card so they can borrow books easily from your local library. This is normally free.
Reading in CAM schools
Our trust, The CAM Academy Trust has set an ambitious five-year strategy: CAM30. One of our goal areas is the ‘gift of reading’.
Our aim is for 90% of our young people to be able to read well by 2030.
As a trust we are driving this by:
- Having common reading assessments across all our schools
- Training all pupil-facing staff to be teachers of reading
- Having an expert reading lead in all our schools
- Providing high quality support for pupils that need it
- Embedding strong cultures of reading
- Offering a professional network for reading leads across our schools