Dear Parents & Carers,

At Hugo Meynell, it is our aim for all children to have a genuine love of books and to become confident, competent readers. This is important to allow our children to access learning opportunities across the curriculum, and the ability to read is fundamental to education and is vital for success. It helps with communication, expands vocabulary and helps with written work.

Reading is of high importance across the school from when children arrive in Nursery, until they leave in Year 6. Children are exposed to language rich environments as well as a whole range of texts to choose from. Reading takes place every day in every classroom in a variety of ways; one to one reading, guided reading, guided comprehension, reading across the curriculum, end of day story to name just a few. Adults model reading to the children as well as the children being given lots of opportunities to read themselves as well as reading allowed to develop their fluency. You will notice in reading diaries when your child has been part of a reading session as they will have it dated and stamped with ‘I have read with an adult today’ or ‘Guided Reading’.

From Nursery, children learn Phonics by listening and rhyming. In Reception, and as they become more confident with different sounds, they begin to take phonetically decodable books home to read. These are phonetically decodable books that contain sounds that the children know and that they can read independently. This encourages children and motivates them to read more. This continues into KS1 as the children continue with the phonics scheme. This helps to promote a love of reading and an eager interest to read more.

Once children have completed the phonics scheme, they remain on a scheme book right through until the end of Year 6. They are also encouraged to choose a library book that they can read alongside this.

Books are changed frequently depending on class timetables and children are always encouraged to re-read books if they choose to do so. Reading diaries are also checked weekly with a ‘Reading Record Checked’ stamp.

We ask that from Reception, all children read at least three times a week. From Reception to Year 4, parents/carers are asked to comment and sign reading diaries to show when children have read. This also helps to communicate with teaching staff how your child/ren is getting on with the book they are reading. In Year 5 and 6, we ask that the children start to take on the responsibility of writing their own comments about the books that they have read. However, we do still ask for an adult signature once a week in reading diaries. This can also still be used to communicate to teaching staff about how your child/ren is getting on with reading.

Rewards are given for our wonderful readers. For reading the expected three times a week, children will receive an ‘I’ve read at home 3 times this week’ stamp in their reading diary and 5 team points. For reading more than three times a week, children will receive a ‘Star Reader’ stamp in their reading diary, as well as a stamp in their sticker book and a special ‘Star Reader sticker’ on their jumper. We can all work together to encourage our children to read at home and to ensure that their reading diaries are up to date weekly.

During guided reading sessions, the children are taught to develop their understanding and skills using VIPERS. VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  These are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. To help with the understanding of these different question types, your child will have a VIPERS bookmark, to keep in their book, which can be used to help you to ask them a range of questions when they are reading to you. These will also be used in school.

VIPERS stands for:

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequence (Key Stage 1) or Summarise (Key Stage 2)

You can find out more about VIPERS by clicking on the PDFs below.

We hope that this helps you to understand how reading is prioritised at Hugo Meynell and the importance that we place on ensuring that each and every child in our school catches the reading bug.