We aim to foster a love of books and reading from the very first day your child attends our school. We do this through books always being available for you child to read - every classroom has a reading area with a selection of books and we also have a dedicated library area, sharing books with children on a regular basis and displays showing the value of reading. We  read, retell, rewrite, adapt and share books during more formal lesson time linked to literacy skills and thematic work.

During the first few weeks of school your child will begin to bring home reading books. These will begin with simple picture books which contain no words. These encourage your child to tell their own story by observing what is taking place in the illustrations. This helps the children to develop story style language. We also encourage adults to tell stories too.

The children then progress onto books containing simple short words that they are able to sound out using the phonic skills they have learnt in class. This then leads onto more complex books containing longer sentences which eventually lead onto story books.

The children are heard regularly in school by a variety of adults and books are changed on a regular basis. Often books are kept for more than 1 night as it is beneficial for a child to reread stories.

In school, we use a phonics approach to reading. Our chosen systemic approach to phonics resource, is Phonics Bug (Pearson), The children will learn phonics (letter sounds) in class and use this to sound out and blend words. We use Phonics Bug to teach the letter sounds in class and parents can access this resource at home through their child's individual login. Within the resource children are allocated more books which means they can also have the experience of reading on line. 

Our reading scheme is levelled into different bands from 1 to 12 and the children progress through these levels at their own pace. Once they have completed phase 12 the children become “free readers” and are able to select their own reading material.

As our pupils move through the school they can access the wonderful 'Reading Cloud' online resource. 

Reading Cloud is an exciting, interactive way of sharing book recommendations and chat, and for pupils to keep a record of what they've enjoyed reading. On the Reading Cloud site everyone has a private login and their own page which they can personalise with the names of favourite authors in a 'virtual library'. There are also opportunities to blog, and to comment on the blog entries of their Criftins classmates. It's a great way to connect with other readers and to create a book buzz!