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Reading

Reading at Parson Street

At Parson Street we believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers.

At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through a carefully designed teaching curriculum that exposes our children to a wide range of genres and utilises thought-provoking, high-quality texts.

Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for future success. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent, whole-school approach to the teaching of reading in order to embed reading skills and identify and close any gaps.

Children will learn to select texts for enjoyment and as a vehicle to drive their own knowledge and understanding. They will develop the skills to comprehend, draw inferences, analyse, evaluate and assess the reliability of different texts. 

We have high expectations of all children and we encourage children to challenge themselves, persevere and pursue success.

‘Language opens doors. It unlocks the world of reading and the imagination, the excitement of writing, the capacity to explore new subjects and releases our potential to learn and grow as an individual. In schools, it underpins progress, impacts on attainment throughout primary and secondary years, affects self-esteem and behaviour and plays a huge role in a child’s future life chances. Without enough language – a word gap – a child is seriously limited in their enjoyment of school and success beyond.’

– Jane Harley (Oxford University Press)

 

Reading Spines

Our reading spine has been carefully curated to give children a rich, challenging and culturally meaningful diet of literature. Drawing on guidance from the Five Plagues of the Developing Reader framework (Teach Like a Champion), we have ensured that pupils encounter a balanced range of archaic texts, non-linear narratives, narratively complex structures, figurative and symbolic writing, and resistant texts. Each category plays its own role in building sophisticated readers: archaic texts strengthen vocabulary and confidence with unfamiliar syntax; non-linear and narratively complex books support flexible thinking and deepen comprehension; figurative and symbolic works nurture inference, metaphorical understanding and emotional literacy; and resistant texts encourage children to grapple with ambiguity, subtlety and multiple interpretations.
 
Alongside this, our reading spine includes a broad selection of classic children’s literature to build cultural capital and create shared reference points across the school. These books offer a sense of literary heritage, but also powerful opportunities for discussion. For example, the quaint, formal turns of phrase in Beatrix Potter or the old-fashioned etiquette and assumptions found in early Paddington Bear stories give children a gentle way to explore how language changes over time and how social norms evolve. These moments spark rich conversation, invite comparison, and begin to develop that delightful, slightly knowing readerly awareness that literature reflects the era in which it was written.
 
Finally, our reading spine is intentionally representative of our community and the diverse world our children grow up in. We have selected books that explore a range of family structures, celebrate neurodivergence, acknowledge complex emotions and mental health, and sensitively portray the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers. Bringing these strands together -literary challenge, timeless classics, and inclusive representation -has allowed us to create a comprehensive, carefully sequenced reading spine for every year group. Our choices are informed by national English curriculum guidance, the work of Pie Corbett, St Peter’s research and practice, and recommendations from Schools of Sanctuary, ensuring that our approach is both evidence-based and deeply aligned with our school values.

Take a look at our reading spines below!

Nursery & Reception

Year 1 & 2

Year 3 & 4

Year 5 & 6

Reading for Pleasure

As a school, we know that there is no greater impact on children’s reading attainment than the enjoyment of books and reading regularly.  With this in mind, reading for pleasure is a fundamental priority, with reading both valued and visible at school. 

With our own well-stocked library and links with the local library in Bedminster, children have constant access to a range of high quality texts. Each class also has their own lending library from which children can donate and borrow books as they please. 

To support with the enjoyment of reading, termly reading competitions encourage each child within the school to read at least four times a week. Children are able to add Grit to their class jars to demonstrate their reading practise. 

Reading Comprehension

We have been on a journey with reading comprehension over the past few years. As a school, we realised that there are a number of skills that adults use automatically when reading which children do not. Traditional guided reading schemes heavily focus on inference and lack the same level of modelling and discussion used within our other subjects. With this in mind, we have created a bespoke reading programme named ‘Thinking Out Loud’. This method of teaching reading comprehension focusses on the importance of oracy and teacher modelling to better understand texts.

When reading, adults . . . 

  1. Think actively about texts by asking questions and making predictions.
  2. Identify breakdowns in meaning and attempt to solve them.
  3. Use their background knowledge, comparing the text to what they know of the world, other texts and their own, personal experiences. 
  4. Make links within texts, using key points and ideas to form an overall ‘gist’.
  5. Make inferences based on hidden clues and meanings within the text. 
Within Thinking Out Loud, children are given the opportunity to dissect texts using the above skills. This is both modelled to them by the teacher, and discussed with their peers before children develop these skills independently. 
 
For more details on Thinking Out Loud, please see the powerpoint below.