Intent/ Vision

At St John’s there is a determination that every child will leave us a fluent reader with a love of reading. We believe that children need to learn to read so that they can then read to learn in all areas of the curriculum. We instil a life long love of reading so that children can access and read a wide variety of texts with passion, fluency and understanding. We strive to provide a literacy-rich environment, high quality texts that provide all children with a mirror to their world and inspiring learning opportunities to enable them to apply their knowledge of a high quality structured synthetic phonics programme.

We believe reading is an entitlement that enables children to connect with some of the finest words ever written. It should open up a world of possibility and intrigue and is a fundamental life skill which, enables children to communicate effectively in all areas and equips them for the challenges they will face in the wider world.

How we reach reading at St Johns.

At St Johns, we put reading at the heart of the curriculum and teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At St John’s, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects. We use word aware to develop the children’s vocabulary and build an understanding of new vocabulary.