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From the very start, children are encouraged to have a love of books and reading. Word reading skills are taught through the Read, Write, Inc approach supported by a wide range of home readers, books and texts. Comprehension skills are taught through a range of individual, group and whole class teaching where teachers use VIPERS to develop the children’s skills across the range of abilities.
To see the progression of skills in Reading from EYFS to Year 6, please read our Progression of Reading Overview.
VIPERS focus on the teaching of the following reading skills; Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarise (KS2)/Sequence (KS1). When teaching reading in a whole class context, teachers may focus on practising one skill in isolation or more than one depending on the text used. When listening to readers one-to-one, adults in school will choose a VIPERS focus and develop that reading skill with a child.
Please take a look at some of our Reading work below.
High quality class texts have been chosen to challenge and inspire children’s thinking and is a driver for the teaching of writing and grammar, punctuation and spelling. As we have mixed age classes at Beamish Primary, we follow a two year rolling programme of our texts with KS1, lower and upper KS2 so that all children will read the full range of texts.
You can view a breakdown of our whole school Literacy overview below to see the progression in our class texts from EYFS to Year 6.
In addition, we also have a list of suggested high-quality reading books for each year group called our ‘Recommended Readers’. Like with the Whole School Literacy Overview, these books have been carefully selected for children to read at home and span across different genres and include a range of topics. 
We highly encourage our children to read frequently at home and we record any home reading in our reading records.
Please view our ‘Recommended Readers’ below for each year group. If you would like further suggestions of books for your children to read at home, please contact the class teacher.
Recommended Reading Reception
Recommended Reading Y1
Recommended Reading Y2
Recommended Reading Y3
Recommended Reading Y4
Recommended Reading Y5
Recommended Reading Y6
Each class has a copy of the recommended reading books in class as part of our ‘Bookflix’ corners. Here, children can read these books at home and school and once completed they receive a stamp on their ‘Bookflix’ loyalty card. Our children enjoy writing book reviews of the books they have read, recommending them to others in the class.
We have a wonderful school library which contains many books including those from much loved children’s authors and books of every genre. Our children enjoy reading their books in the library or in our other reading areas both inside school and outside
in our designated reading area.
In addition, our children have access to an online website called Fiction Express. This website contains a range of online books which are written in real-time by the authors. This means children can read a chapter before voting on what they want to see happening in the next chapter. The author then collates the results and writes the next chapter ready for the next week to read. The website also contains a range of books at different reading levels for children to simple enjoy reading at their leisure.
We use the Read Write Inc programme in Reception and Key Stage 1. This programme includes a systematic and dynamic whole-school approach to teaching phonics. This programme is supplemented by a wide range of other reading materials that the children use at home and at school. Children in Key Stage 1 follow a phonics programme that supports their individual reading level.
For more detailed guidance and resources, please visit out Early Reading and Phonics page.
Class texts are the main driver for the teaching of writing. Through these children are taught the skills of spelling, handwriting, composition, and vocabulary, grammar and punctuation in line with national end of year expectations. As with all subjects, able children are extended further and those requiring support receive additional teaching and intervention. By the end of Key Stage 2, all children will have worked with an author.
To see the progression of skills in Writing from EYFS to Year 6, please read our Progression of Writing Overview.
In school, we dedicate a lot of time to improving our vocabulary and exploring new, ambitious word choices through
Vocabulary Ninja. Each class displays their tier 2 and tier 3 key words which are discussed, investigated and explored after being carefully selected from our class texts or curriculum topics. We also have our ‘words of the week’, which focus on words
that our children many not encounter in their everyday life or in common tasks. In addition to the meaning and spelling of the word, we also explore synonyms and antonyms and look for opportunities to use these words, along with the others, in our writing.
For spelling, we follow the National Curriculum, teaching the progression of spelling rules across the whole school, along with Read Write Inc phonics at KS1 level. For the full list of spelling objectives, please click here.
To practise weekly spellings in a fun and interactive way, we use Spelling Shed online, which enables children to practise at different levels individually, before having the opportunity to compete against others in the class. To access Spelling Shed sot hat your child can log into their account please visit the website here.
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