Reading at Bishop Lonsdale CE Academy

At Bishop Londale CE Academy, we have high expectations of all children and encourage our children to challenge themselves and persevere with their reading, through a passion for reading, our Christian values and our school ethos.

To foster a love of reading and a want to read for pleasure, we enrich our children's learning through enabling them to be lifelong readers. 

Reading is an essential life skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for successes in future life.  Because of this, reading is at the heart of our curriculum from modelling reading to children to linking reading into all areas of learning through imaginative stories and thought provoking texts.

At Bishop Lonsdale Academy, we understand the importance of a consistent approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or above. 

Our consistent approach includes using a Systematic Synthethic Phonics Scheme: Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised for phonics progression and whole school reading VIPERS to develop effective comprehension skills.

Reading VIPERS

VIPERS is the acronym we use at Bishop Lonsdale Academy to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains in our reading curriculum. 

They are the key areas children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of the texts we cover in school:

VIPERS stands for

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequence or Summarise

Suggested Reading Lists

Here are some suggested examples of age appropriate children's books to support with reading from home in a child friendly format. 

If you can, spend some time together with your child having a look at the book covers for their year group and talk about which ones look inspiring to read.

How can you read for pleasure?

1. Choose a fiction or non-fiction book with a theme or topic that you will enjoy

2. Find a calming space to read and allow yourself time to get lost in the book

3. Try to find a book with some words that are challenging to keep you interested

4. Talk to your family, friends and teachers about what you are reading to share your reading experience. 

Reading at Home 

These are some activities you might want to try with your child to deepen their understanding of the story they are reading:

• Explore it: Read the story more than once and talk about the plot, characters and illustrations 
• Illustrate it: Draw the main events or characters of the story and label with key words or phrases from the text
• Talk about it: Discuss the characters, settings, plot and make predictions about what might happen in the plot or to the characters next
• Imagine it: Imagine what the characters would be like in real life
• Create it: Write about the story - a book review, comic strip, design a new front cover, write a new blurb or produce an advert to recommend the story to a friend

Online Support 

There are also a wide range of online materials to support reading across all year groups.  Here are some useful websites you might want to have a look at with your child:

Have a look on your Class Page to see what other exciting reading materials you can find!