At King's Gate Primary School, we understand the importance of reading as a critical life-skill. In order to access all areas of the curriculum (and life), our children must be able to read.

The best way to ensure that our children become fluent readers is to instil a love of reading. We do this in several ways:

• Quality texts used to plan topics and themes
• Reading Challenges for all phases of the school
• A wide variety of phonically decodable books for early reading
• Reading is taught explicitly to whole classes
• Links with organisations such as 'School Readers'
• Reading to the children on a regular basis

Quality Texts

Books are purposefully selected to enhance our carefully planned curriculum to both enhance the learning and also expose our children to high quality texts across a range of genres and authors. Regardless of reading ability, all pupils access these texts that help provide context to the children and drive the learning. 

To see the current texts being used visit the relevant class page here . You can also view the Knowledge Organiser that accompanies the text. Below are examples of some of the texts used.

Reading Challenges

To encourage reading within the school there are a number of challenges children are encouraged to participate in. 

• Fantastic Four
• 100 Books Challenge   

Fantastic Four

Each week children are encouraged to read a minimum of four times to an adult and have their Home Link book signed. At the end of the week, in our celebration assembly, we share class percentages and recognise the achievements of each class.

100 Books Challenge

Each phase (KS1, LKS2 and UKS2) has a book list compiled of recommended books that cover a variety of genres and authors which the children are encouraged to read. Lots of these texts are available in school where we have a growing collection in the classrooms as well as them being available in the local libraries.

'100 books' booklets are available to view and download on class pages as well as children receiving a hard copy when they enter each phase. 

Whole Class Reading

Reading is taught using a whole class approach with the the book acting as a driver. This ensures that all pupils have access to high quality texts that are interesting and age-appropriate, regardless of reading ability, and provides opportunities for pupils to use higher-order reading skills such as inference and viewpoint. 

Typically, whole class reading lessons provide further opportunities for lots of discussion and talk around books and reading which in turn  increases engagement across the curriculum and children's love of reading.