At Bishop's Hull Primary School, we believe that reading is an essential life skill. We understand how a strong grounding in reading will impact the future learning and development of a pupil in all subjects and prepare them for life in modern society. We believe that phonics provides the foundations of learning to develop into fluent reading and successful writing. 

Early reading is taught in EYFS and Year 1 through direct phonics teaching. At Bishop's Hull, we follow the Little Wandle phonics scheme and all children in Dormouse and Otter class have timetabled daily phonics lessons. Through  phonics children learn to segment words to support their spelling ability and blend sounds to read words. 

Each week children in Otter class will take home a reading book that is matched to their current phonics learning stage. We make sure that reading books are closely matched to their increasing phonic knowledge including tricky words so that they can gain confidence as readers by building their reading fluency.  As well as their phonetically matched reading book, children will also select a book from their classroom reading area to share and enjoy with a grown-up at home.

We encourage parents to give their child the opportunity to read at least 4 times a week. It is important to remember the more enjoyable the experience, the more children will want to read.