Guided Reading

Teachers discuss the cover and the text of a book with the children and share ideas. They look at vocabulary and ask the children for predictions.  The WalkThru’s approach to develop reading fluency is used, which includes modelled reading by the teacher, echo reading - where children chorus and repeat the teachers expression/prosody, paired reading - to practice prosody and fluency, and then the children answer comprehension questions (verbally).

In EYFS and Year 1 and 2, children begin to answer VIPERS style questions and are steadily introduced to higher order questions requiring the development of prediction and inference skills.

Reading books

In EYFS in the Autumn term, children choose and share picture books. In the Spring term, when phase two has been taught and when children are ready, children are given books which have been selected by the teacher. The books are taken home for a week, and then changed again by the teacher.

Books are matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge, so they can read at 90%+ fluency rate– enabling them to transfer and apply their phonic knowledge.  Once children are reading almost all words fluently and have finished Phase 5 Phonics in Year 2, then fully decodable reading books will not be needed.

Re-reading a book at home more than once is recommended to improve fluency and confidence. 

Children take Reading Records home for parents to complete.  A support template is given to help parents make useful observations and comment on these.