Reading

READING AT ST PAUL’S

At St Paul’s, reading is a top priority. We are committed to ensuring that every child learns to read confidently, regardless of their starting point, background, or individual needs.

Through reading, children develop their vocabulary, language comprehension, and are introduced to new ideas and concepts, helping to broaden their understanding of the world.

Becoming a skilled reader requires several interconnected strands, and at St Paul’s we follow a clear approach:

Knowledge + Strategy = Skilled Reader

Knowledge – Alongside our broad and balanced curriculum, children engage with carefully selected high-quality texts. We explicitly teach rich tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary and encourage children to actively interact with what they are reading. Strategies such as timelines, summaries, emojis, and discussion prompts help pupils make connections between texts and the wider curriculum, building on their existing knowledge (schemas) and understanding of the world.

Phonics – Strong phonological awareness underpins all early reading, ensuring children can decode words confidently. (See our phonics information above for more details.)

Prosody – Prosody acts as a bridge between decoding and comprehension. We explicitly teach and model reading with expression, pace, smoothness, intonation, and automaticity, helping children develop fluency and a natural rhythm when reading aloud.

Comprehension Strategies – Children are taught specific skills to explore the depth and richness of texts. These strategies are linked to the content domains of reading, allowing children to understand, analyse, and interpret texts effectively.

When these elements are combined, children develop into skilled, confident readers.

To deliver reading in a structured and purposeful way, we use the Pathways to Read programme. This mastery-based approach ensures that children build knowledge and skills progressively, using high-quality texts as a focus for learning. Across Key Stages 2, children have five whole class shared reading sessions per week, alongside bespoke reading interventions at least three times a week. Whole-class sessions focus on key reading skills, while follow-up tasks give children the chance to demonstrate mastery independently. Pathways to Read also provides extensive opportunities to develop and widen children’s vocabulary, building on the rich language environment we cultivate across the school.

OUR HIGH QUALITY TEXTS

Progression in VOCABULARY

Progression in RETRIEVAL

Progression in SEQUENCING AND SUMMARISING

Progression in INFERENCE

Progression in PREDICTION

Progression in STRUCTURE

Progression in LANGUAGE CHOICE

Progression in MAKING COMPARISONS