We expect every child to leave our school as a confident, fluent, and enthusiastic reader who carries a lifelong love of books. We expect them to engage thoughtfully with a wide range of texts and authors, expressing their ideas with confidence while continuing to develop a rich vocabulary and an active imagination.

At St John’s, our intention is to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality English curriculum that is both challenging and enjoyable. We are committed to providing pupils with a rich variety of reading materials and opportunities that nurture their development as lifelong readers and instil in them a genuine love of reading. Our curriculum aims to enhance all children’s vocabulary and their use of standard English, both in written and spoken forms. We want every child to become a confident and independent reader who is able to apply their skills across all areas of learning. Moreover, we encourage inquisitive reading habits, motivating children to ask questions about what they read and to engage as active, reflective learners.

We take an outward-looking and creative approach to delivering a high-quality English curriculum. This implementation is grounded in a secure understanding of both the curriculum and the wider subject area. Systematic phonics teaching in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 ensures that pupils quickly acquire early reading skills. Daily reading opportunities are embedded across all key stages, including guided reading, shared reading, and independent reading sessions. Carefully chosen, high-quality texts represent a diverse range of authors, cultures, and genres, promoting inclusion and broadening pupils’ perspectives. Explicit vocabulary instruction is woven through our lessons to help pupils develop confidence in using new language in discussion and writing. Teachers model a love of reading by sharing their own reading experiences and leading meaningful discussions about texts. We also provide targeted interventions for children who require additional support, ensuring that all pupils are equipped to make rapid progress in their learning.

In planning for reading, we take a structured approach across long-, medium-, and short-term frameworks. Long-term planning follows the Development Matters and National Curriculum and guidance, while medium-term plans draw upon year group Age Related Expectation (ARE) sheets to ensure balanced half-termly coverage of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction texts. Short-term planning continues to reference ARE sheets, and teachers use tools such as Bug Club and Cracking Comprehension for Key Stage 1, as well as Destination Reader for Key Stage 2, to support both oral and written responses to reading. Through this carefully structured approach, we aim to ensure consistency, progression, and enthusiasm for reading throughout the school.

 

An understanding of progression in reading books is crucial to our success.

 

We recognise that a clear understanding of the sequence in which reading skills are acquired underpins effective teaching and is central to each pupil’s development as a confident, fluent reader.

In the Early Years, children begin their reading journey with picture-only books, which help them to develop language, storytelling skills, and comprehension through discussion. As soon as phonics lessons begin, pupils move on to phonically decodable books that match their taught phonics phase. By the end of Reception, our expectation is that children will be reading books securely at a minimum of Phase 4.

In Key Stage 1, children continue to read phonics-based books up to Phase 5 before progressing to colour-banded books. The colour bands provide a structured approach to recognising increasing levels of challenge as pupils become more confident in blending and segmenting words. From Phase 6 onwards, the bands continue to guide progression, helping teachers and children to identify suitable texts while promoting fluency. We understand that once decoding is secure, a child’s ease with a text is often influenced by their interests and life experiences. Therefore, our focus shifts from simply moving through the levels quickly to deepening the range, understanding, and enjoyment of reading.

The colour-banding system we use offers a clear framework for matching books to children’s emerging reading abilities and for monitoring whether pupils are working within age-related expectations. In Key Stage 2, children who are secure in their reading skills continue to use this system, exploring a diverse range of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry texts until they are ready to become ‘free readers’. This structured yet flexible approach ensures that every child’s reading journey is purposeful, balanced, and increasingly independent.

A copy of the colour banding system we use is available at the bottom of this page. 

A love of reading is further developed through visits to our school libraries, which children visit as a class each week. During these sessions, they can read library books, listen to the teacher read to them or share books with their friends. This is also an extra opportunity for the teacher to listen to some pupils read.

 

How we teach reading:

At St John’s, we place a strong emphasis on teaching reading through a range of structured, evidence-based approaches that ensure every child becomes a confident, fluent, and enthusiastic reader.

 

Guided Reading

In Key Stage 1, guided reading sessions provide children with essential opportunities to develop their key reading strategies and skills for both decoding and comprehension. Pupils are grouped by ability to ensure that the level of challenge in the texts they read is appropriate to their current stage of development. Within these groups, children practise reading aloud, build their fluency, and consolidate their phonics knowledge while listening to peers and learning from strong reading models. To strengthen comprehension skills, we use the ‘Pawsome Reading Gang’ framework, which explicitly teaches pupils how to approach different types of reading questions. Through engaging characters, children learn to identify, discuss, and apply reading strategies with growing confidence.

Alongside group-based teaching, we also use a whole-class guided reading approach for some lessons. During these sessions, the teacher introduces a shared text and focuses on developing a specific reading skill, such as inference or prediction. Pupils then complete a related activity that is adapted to match their individual learning level, ensuring that all children can access and apply the skill effectively.

 

Destination Reader

As children progress into Key Stage 2, their development as readers continues through the Destination Reader programme. Introduced in Year 3 and followed consistently through to Year 6, Destination Reader supports a smooth transition from phonics to higher-level comprehension and analytical reading. During the summer term of Year 2, pupils begin to encounter some of the core language and concepts from the programme, helping to prepare them for this next stage. Destination Reader provides access to high-quality, engaging books that promote deeper understanding and a genuine enjoyment of reading. Talk is at the heart of this approach: children engage in partner reading, meaningful discussion, and collaborative reflection on texts to strengthen comprehension.

The programme is built around seven key reading skills identified within the National Curriculum—predicting, making connections, asking questions, evaluating, inferring, summarising, and clarifying. These skills are revisited regularly and applied across a wide range of genres, helping pupils to read critically and purposefully. Interventions run alongside classroom teaching to ensure that any pupils struggling with reading are given the targeted support they need to make rapid progress and to keep up with their peers.

 

As a result of this coherent and ambitious reading vision, pupils at St John’s leave our school as fluent, confident readers who read widely and with enjoyment. The vast majority of pupils achieve or exceed age-related expectations within the National Curriculum, demonstrating strong comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. They speak articulately about books and authors, expressing their understanding of themes, characters, and language. Our pupils read for pleasure, independently selecting books that both challenge and inspire them. Through their engagement with literature, their language development, imagination, and empathy are enriched. Ongoing assessment and pupil voice consistently highlight reading as a strength and a source of pride within our school culture. Together, these outcomes ensure that every child leaves St John’s equipped with the literacy skills, confidence, and enthusiasm needed to succeed in the next stage of their education and beyond.