Reading

At Little Hill we ensure pupils become skilled and fluent readers through high quality and engaging teaching sessions, while encouraging a love of reading for pleasure.

Reading is taught through daily specific phonics (Foundation and Year 1) and English skills sessions (Year 2 - KS2), which focus on the development of reading skills through the review, teach, practise and apply method.

The school follows the Letters and Sounds approach to teaching phonics and uses a range of individual reading schemes to provide enjoyment, breadth, challenge and interest for pupils.  We also have frequent guided reading sessions in all classes to teach the skills of reading. 

In the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, the focus is initially on the development of decoding skills through phonics sessions, progressing to the development of inference and comprehension skills.

In all year groups, teachers maximise opportunities to apply taught reading skills across the curriculum, especially in other subjects.

Library

The children regularly visit our amazing library to choose books and carry out research for projects. Every class is allocated a time to visit the library each week to read or choose their own free choice books.

Reading for Pleasure

Each classroom has a reading area that promotes new books to read and share.  We always end every day with a shared read of a class novel, led by the teacher.  This is a wonderful opportunity to develop inference skills and for the class to be involved in discussions about, characters, plots, moods and settings.  The session nearly always ends on a cliffhanger with everyone eager for the next instalment!