How does our reading provision promote the spiritual development of each child? 

We take every opportunity to develop and promote each pupil’s spiritual development through the texts that we choose for our children to read. We implement the Catholic Pupil Profile at every opportunity to allow pupils to understand their own faith and to ensure that they are well-rounded citizens. The Catholic Life of the school is at the heart of every curriculum area as we are able to explore God’s creation through the subject and this further helps to develop and enhance each individual’s spirituality. One way this is achieved is through choosing high-quality texts with diverse characters who can be analysed and explored through consideration of the Catholic Virtues. 

What is the intent of the reading provision? 

At St Bede’s Catholic Middle School, we believe that reading is fundamental to education and that accessing the wider curriculum depends on literacy skills. Therefore, our reading provision aims to provide all pupils with the skills and knowledge necessary to read fluently and confidently, building knowledge of vocabulary whilst enabling them to develop a life-long love of reading. We have planned our various curriculums and their reading times so that the pupils are exposed to a wide range of texts, genres and key skills. These high-quality texts, which provide progressively greater challenge, are chosen in order to engage the reader to help them to develop their love of reading. This includes not only fiction and non-fiction, but also giving the children the opportunity to enjoy plays, rhymes, poems and songs together as classes, so that teachers can build on children’s strong emotional connection to language.  

In order to prioritise reading, every pupil has 20 minutes of dedicated reading time each day and they each spend time in the library at least once a week with an experienced librarian where they read and quiz, using the Accelerated Reading programme. In order to develop our children’s love of reading, our library is regularly restocked, and we encourage children to bring in old books which they have loved reading for others to read also. Pupils can discuss books they have enjoyed, request specific titles to be added to our library and they can also become ‘librarians’ themselves, taking an active role in the daily running of the library. Various competitions and incentives can also be seen in our library to further engage our readers, as well as book fairs throughout the year. 

Teaching them to read as well as possible produces many advantages for our children and enables them to access the wider curriculum and so reading skills are explicitly taught through the English curriculum. The children are encouraged to analyse texts, ensuring a focus on background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge. The progress of the children is monitored closely through a variety of different assessments: daily formative assessment; reading comprehension activities; half termly PiXL reading papers in KS2; termly STAR reading tests and annual GL assessments. Detailed QLA of the PiXL papers and GL assessments are analysed by the Heads of English to ensure that our curriculum is regularly adapted to suit the needs of our children. The STAR reading ages of the pupils are also closely monitored by our librarian, the Heads of English and class teachers, as are the frequency and results of their Accelerated Reading quizzes.  

After analysing data from each of the above assessments, we then ensure that any pupils whose reading age is not in line with their peers receive vital intervention to ensure that they can access the curriculum and are able to reach their full potential. Interventions include Quality First Teaching; children being taught in differentiated English sets; support of Teaching and Learning Mentors, where appropriate; use of the phonics-based Lexia programme and through short-term PiXL interventions with the Head of English which focus on developing reading comprehension skills. The impact of these reading interventions is regularly reviewed. 

How does the reading provision support the broader development of the child? 

Our exceptional reading provision is designed to support the broader development of the child through the topics in the rich and varied texts which they read. They have access to these texts throughout their entire school day: in their English lessons, where they have weekly class read sessions; in reading time, where they have read a novel read to them as a class; in their library lessons, where they have access to a vast range of books and in all areas of the curriculum, where our Heads of Department have carefully chosen texts which promote our Modern British Values and Catholic Values and Virtues. Children are exposed to texts from a range of cultures and focus on different genres, where important messages are delivered. We also support the broader development of the child through character analysis and key themes such as good vs. evil in the texts that we are covering.