A Reading Culture

At Herbert Morrison we endeavour to foster pupil’s life long love of reading.

We facilitate this through the sharing of a wide range of children’s literature, which is both read to and by the children. We have a well-stocked school library, class book corners and comfortable Reading Gallery areas throughout the school environment. We actively encourage children to use the local South Lambeth Library through class and group visits as well as promoting this fantastic community resource to parents.

Click on the link for further information about library services in Lambeth.

Teaching Reading

Basic reading skills are taught through daily Systematic Phonics, following the Twinkl Phonics programme.  

Please watch the video below to find out more about phonics teaching in school and also the phonics screening that takes place in Year 1 every year. 

For more phonics information please see the phonics page.

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Accompanying this we use the Rhino Readers reading scheme, supplemented by Oxford Reading Tree phonic readers and Reading Project X. Supporting early readers through decodable books, these schemes introduce phonic concepts sequentially in a structured way, promoting blending as the principal strategy in learning to read. The books are designed to help children experience enthusiasm and success in the early stages of learning to read, building up confidence from the very beginning. Each level introduces new sounds and includes previous sounds so that readers build on previous knowledge making these books excellent for reinforcement and consolidation of learning.

KS2 Reading

In Key Stage 2, a variety of methods are used to encourage and develop a love for reading.

A variety of texts are used to match the needs of the children and promote the cross curricular learning style that is embedded at Herbert Morrison. Teachers primarily encourage reading for meaning. Attention is drawn towards extending their vocabulary and looking at how writers use sentence structure and punctuation to bring a text to life. Children are regularly questioned to gauge their understanding of the different texts in which they encounter. They are given various opportunities to both read independently and as part of a group during comprehension based tasks.

All children will be encouraged to;

• Identify and comment on the structure, features and organisation of texts

• Share their understanding and interpretation of texts by using skills of inference, deduction and interpretation of ideas or events;

• Explain, comment on and respond to a writer’s use of language;
• Use strategies to summarise and develop an overview of the selected text.