Reading Vision

At Westminster CE Primary School, we are committed to ensuring that our learners become skilled and confident readers who know and can use a range of effective reading skills, which allow them to tackle challenging texts whilst ensuring that they gain a good understanding of what has been read.

Westminster has a clear long-term plan for English. The reading section is underpinned by progression in reading documents and the National Curriculum. Teachers use this document to plan units for English which include a reading phase. This is also used to plan for whole class reading lessons in Y2-Y6.

EYFS and Y1 have daily phonics sessions for 1 hour. Children are assessed and are grouped to their level. Children receive a phonics book to take home with them for the week which is matched to their level. Phonics is also delivered to children who need it in Y2-Y6. Children in Y2-Y6 daily reading lessons. During these sessions, children learn specific reading comprehension strategies (prediction, questioning, clarifying, inferring, summarising and activating prior knowledge). Quality age-appropriate texts have been selected as a basis for the reading lessons - these can be full texts or extracts. Modelling of skills, the pre-teaching or post-teaching (Key stage dependent) of vocabulary and high-quality questioning are all non-negotiables for reading lessons. During reading lessons, teachers will plan to cover all requirements of the National Curriculum. Part of this, but not exclusively, is the teaching of VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Sequencing/Summarising). These are six key reading skills that will be modelled, recapped and discussed during every text that is read. Pupils are able to articulate what these skills are and what skills they need to use to answer specific VIPERS questions. All teachers and support staff have been trained in VIPERS to ensure a consistent approach with questioning and vocabulary used in reading sessions, whether that is whole class or 1:1.