At Richmond Avenue, we believe that Reading should be at the centre of learning. 

We passionately believe that all children can achieve well in English, develop confidence and proficiency in the subject and leave well prepared for the next stage of their education. Our intent is to achieve this by giving pupils access to a wide variety of high quality books so that they can develop a passion for reading and experience and explore links in books to other curriculum areas that make their reading more meaningful.

We believe that children who are passionate and avid readers find it easier to become proficient writers. Therefore, opportunities to develop writing skills are embedded across the curriculum, but linked as far as possible to the central high quality class text.

The English curriculum at Richmond is designed to maximise the potential for all learners to succeed. All learning is centred around a high quality ‘class text’, which links to work across the curriculum. These texts are engaging and, we hope, inspire a love of reading for its own sake.  New skills and concepts are sequenced to build upon the pupils’ previous knowledge and experience of reading and writing so that children’s ability in reading and writing is able to progress in a way that is easily understood by them.

Reading comprehensions skills, for example, are taught through the V.I.P.E.R.S. system, with all children understanding that Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarising are key skills in understanding texts that are built up from the Early Years, throughout Key Stages One and Two.

To learn more about Vipers, please use the links below. 

Phonics at Richmond 

The foundations behind reading means ensuring all of our children have the correct phonetical knowledge to be able to decode and read sounds.  Early reading is supported through the teaching of a systematic, synthetic phonics approach which is prioritised from nursery onwards. This approach allows on-going assessment and early intervention where necessary.  

At Richmond, we teach systematic synthetic phonics from Nursery to Lower Key Stage two, or for as long as it is necessary. We follow a systematic teaching programme for delivery to ensure pupils learn how to effectively decode print to enable them to read. Through daily teaching of phonics and the skills of grapheme-phoneme correspondence, pupils are taught phonics, progressing through individual sounds and blends through five steps. The sets for teaching ensure that pupils have the skills to read many common words early in their phonics learning through segmenting and blending of taught sounds. To enhance the delivery and recall of individual letter sounds and letter formations, we utilise the Read Write Inc formation cards.

Through our kinaesthetic, interactive approach to teaching phonics we aim to develop the children’s phonological awareness, ability to segment and blend words and read tricky words by sight, to become fluent readers and have good foundations in spelling.

Within each phonics sessions, children experience a range of visual and practical activities that allows then to practice and apply their phonetic knowledge. This includes through dictation of sounds, words and sentences as well as through practical games, the use of word and sound flash cards and opportunities to read and write at the appropriate level.