Reading Curriculum Intent

At Radcliffe-on-Trent Junior School, we believe that reading is the gateway to learning, imagination and the wider world. Our reading curriculum is ambitious and inclusive, enabling every child to become a fluent, confident and thoughtful reader who can understand, enjoy and respond to an increasingly rich range of texts. Above all, we want children to develop a lifelong love of reading and to see themselves as readers.

Through our commitment to Making Learning Memorable, pupils encounter high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry and develop the fluency, vocabulary and comprehension needed to understand increasingly challenging texts. They learn to read accurately and expressively, retrieve and interpret information, make inferences and predictions, explore authors' choices, summarise ideas and justify their responses using evidence. As pupils move through the school, they become increasingly confident and independent in discussing, interpreting and responding to what they read.

Our school values are woven naturally through reading. Pupils Be Curious as books introduce them to new ideas, knowledge, people, places and perspectives; Be Brave as they tackle challenging texts and unfamiliar vocabulary and share their own interpretations; and Be Kind as reading helps them encounter experiences and viewpoints beyond their own and develop understanding and empathy for others.

Reading for pleasure is at the heart of life at ROTJS. Through carefully chosen books, daily opportunities to read, class readers, our library, book recommendations and shared reading experiences, we aim to create a community in which books are talked about, shared and enjoyed. We recognise that children become readers in different ways and are committed to helping every child discover books, authors and subjects that capture their interest. Where pupils need additional support with decoding or fluency, we identify this quickly and provide targeted teaching so that every child can access the wider curriculum and experience success as a reader.

By the time pupils leave ROTJS, we want them to have the fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and confidence to read successfully and independently. They will be able to engage thoughtfully with increasingly complex texts, discuss and justify their ideas and make purposeful choices about what they read. Most importantly, we want them to leave us seeing reading not simply as something they can do, but as something that can inform, inspire and enrich their lives.