The teaching of reading at Shakespeare begins with understanding the importance of word recognition and language comprehension which is highlighted through the Scarborough Reading Rope. As a school we are focused on ensuring that all pupils leave our school fluent in reading and have the ability to comprehend what they read across the curriculum.

At the Learning Academies Trust, pupils are taught the Reading objectives from the National Curriculum. We know that to be an accomplished reader, pupils must comprehend what they read and their fluency levels will affect their comprehension. In EYFS and KS1, there is a focus on phonics and applying this to their early reading. Pupils will develop their fluency in reading as part of the phonics programme. When pupils complete the phonics programme, they develop their reading skills by reading texts that are age appropriate and cover a range of text types. Teachers use model, echo and choral reading to explicitly teach fluent reading. Alongside this, reading skills are explicitly taught. To support pupils in remembering the reading skills, the acronym VIPERS is used. VIPERS stands for Vocabulary, Inference, Predictions, Explaining, Retrieval, Sequencing (KS1)/ Summarising (KS2). Pupils will be taught the objectives from the National Curriculum but to enhance their acquisition of these, the VIPERS reading skills will be used.  

Typical Structure for Whole Class Reading Lessons 

At Shakespeare Primary School we value the importance of dual coding to ensure children know and remember more. Every lesson is carefully designed to reduce cognitive overload and ensuring children build the fluency and comprehension skills required to love reading and comprehend what they are reading in the wider curriculum. We do this through

An example whole class reading structure: