“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.”  – Roald Dahl

At Emmaus, we believe that the most important skill any child can leave primary school with is the ability to read independently and effectively for meaning. For this reason, we place READING at the heart of our curriculum and we aim to have all of our children reading widely, fluently and confidently regardless of their starting point!

As our children progress through our school they will be taught two key reading skills:

Word reading (the ability to decode words) - will be taught through the use of the DFE validated Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme ‘ReadWriteInc.’ It is a whole school approach to teaching early reading and writing, designed to ensure progress for every child. Integrated comprehension, writing, grammar, spelling, vocabulary and handwriting means that Read Write Inc. is more than just a phonics programme and helps develop key literacy skills for every child. 

All children at Emmaus, will be bench marked to assess which level of books they should be reading and to ensure that they progress appropriately.

Read more about our Phonics Curriculum here

Comprehension (understanding and interpreting what is read) - Children’s comprehension skills will be taught through high quality discussions with teachers and teaching assistants, individual and group reading times and whole class reading activities. We have moved towards a whole class reading approach and we have found that children have become motivated to read and discuss more challenging texts.

You can find more information about Reading throughout our school here

Throughout our school, we encourage the children to learn to love reading and to read regularly outside of school. Each class has a variety of age appropriate reading books for them to enjoy and share together.