At Smithdown Primary School, we believe that developing a love of reading is one of the most important things we can give our children. Reading opens doors to imagination, knowledge and opportunity — it is the foundation of all learning and success.
Our goal is for every child to become a confident, fluent and enthusiastic reader who develops a lifelong love of books. We want all pupils to leave Smithdown reading widely, fluently and with understanding, ready to thrive both academically and personally.
At Smithdown, reading is woven through every aspect of school life. We have designed a bespoke English curriculum that brings together the best elements of Power of Reading, Talk for Writing and Literacy Counts. This approach allows teachers to deliver inspiring, high-quality lessons that develop reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar through the study of rich, diverse texts.
Each half term, children explore a carefully chosen core text that forms the foundation for both reading and writing. These texts reflect a wide range of authors, genres and cultures, helping pupils to see themselves — and others — represented in what they read.
Across the school, children take part in a range of reading experiences, including:
Whole-Class Shared Reading sessions focused on comprehension and language.
Read Write Inc. phonics and reading lessons (EYFS and KS1).
Reading for Pleasure sessions, including being read to daily.
Beanstalk Volunteer Reading, providing individual reading support.
We are proud of our well-stocked lending library, which is open for pupils and families to enjoy together. Every classroom also celebrates reading with a dedicated book corner stocked with age-appropriate, high-quality texts.
Strong phonics teaching is the foundation of our early reading curriculum.
We follow the Read Write Inc. synthetic phonics programme to ensure a consistent, systematic approach across the school.
Children are regularly assessed to ensure they are reading books that are closely matched to their phonics knowledge. Targeted small-group teaching and intervention support any pupil who needs additional help to keep up.
In Key Stage 2, pupils who require continued phonics support use the Fresh Start programme to build fluency and confidence.
This structured, evidence-based approach ensures that every pupil — including those with SEND or new to English — becomes a successful, independent reader.
As pupils progress through school, the focus shifts from learning to read to reading to learn.
Reading comprehension is developed through:
Whole-class reading lessons using high-quality, challenging texts.
Discussion, questioning and vocabulary exploration, led by teachers and teaching assistants.
Individual and group reading time, where pupils apply and deepen understanding.
Our whole-class reading approach ensures that all children can access and enjoy ambitious, language-rich texts. This has led to higher levels of engagement, improved comprehension, and growing confidence in reading aloud and discussing texts.
At Smithdown, reading is not just a skill — it’s a source of joy, imagination and connection.
We foster a love of books by:
Hosting author visits, storytelling events and World Book Day celebrations.
Creating welcoming reading corners and library spaces that encourage exploration.
Sharing stories daily, modelling the enjoyment of reading aloud.
Involving families through our Smithdown Lending Library and reading initiatives.
We want every child to see reading as something they choose to do, not something they have to do.
As part of their learning journey, pupils will:
Read aloud with fluency and expression.
Read for meaning, understanding and enjoyment.
Think carefully and critically about what they read.
Explore a wide variety of stories, poetry and non-fiction.
Use a range of strategies to decode and understand text, including:
Phonic – sounding out and blending letters.
Visual – recognising whole words and using familiar patterns.
Contextual – using background knowledge and illustrations.
Grammatical – working out what makes sense in a sentence.
By the time pupils leave Smithdown Primary, they:
Read confidently, fluently and with understanding.
Can discuss, compare and respond thoughtfully to a wide range of texts.
Have developed a rich vocabulary and deep appreciation for language.
Enjoy reading for pleasure and use it as a tool for learning and wellbeing.
Our children grow as readers who are curious, articulate and inspired — truly living our school motto:
Together We Grow.
Please see the documents below for details of the texts and genres studied across each year group.
These documents should be read alongside our curriculum overviews, as units may be reordered throughout the year. Our bespoke English curriculum continues to evolve to reflect the needs and interests of our pupils.
Primary National Curriculum for English
Support your child with reading
What is Read Write Inc?
Read Write Inc (RWI) is a phonics complete literacy programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. The programme is designed for children aged 4-7. However, at Highfield we begin the programme in Nursery and will continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7 if they still need support in their reading.
RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at https://ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/.
How will RWI be taught?
All children are assessed every 6-8 weeks and placed in groups to target their phonic at the appropriate level. This allows complete participation in lessons.
To help at home:
Your child will start to bring books home when they are confident readers. Please help them to read and give lots of praise!
If you have any other questions about RWI, please see your class teacher.
Phonics Screening Check Year One
What is the Year 1 phonics screening check?
The Year 1 phonics screening check is a short, light-touch assessment to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard.
It will identify the children who need extra help so they are given support by their school to improve their reading skills. They will then be able to retake the check so that schools can track pupils until they are able to decode.
Useful websites for Parents
Please find a list of websites that you may find useful in helping you and your child learn about phonics. Games and fun activity websites are also included.
http://jollylearning.co.uk/ – Games and information for parents
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ – many games to play
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/phonics/play/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html – fun games for the children to play
http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/kentict_home.cfm – fun games for the children to play and information for parents
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.starfall.com/ – fun games for the children to play
http://www.firstschoolyears.com/ – fun games for the children to play
BBC Bitesize – many games to play covering all areas of the curriculum
This link gives you an overview of how RWI phonics is organised.
Please click on this link for the Ruth Miskin website where you can find more information regarding Read Write Inc phonics and Literacy & Language including useful videos and guides for parents.
Year 4 have finished their persuasive letters and spent today’s lesson editing their work. We rotated around various editing stations to ensure we focused on one feature at a time. The children were able to spot mistakes a lot easier in this way.📖✏️🔎
We are reading Into the Forest by Anthony Browne. The children are enjoying looking at his fantastic illustrations and seeing what they can spot. The pictures tell the story and keep us guessing about what happens next.
We have written scripts for two characters in our book. We have used our inference skills to create a conversation that might have happened between them. Then we had some children perform their scripts to the class.
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To think about those who have lost their lives, we created some rhyming poetry. We based our poems on poppy fields, just like our art work.
Starting our new book, we met a character that loves the sun light stroking her skin as she dances. We used this image to create our own to show how the sun makes the girl feel.
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Yesterday morning, we went for a story, map activity and craft activity at the Palm house. In the afternoon, we followed our map and and completed some fieldwork around Sefton Park. We spotted many human and physical features of the park and added how we felt in each place on our map.
Huge thanks to so many parents who joined us for session 3 of our literacy workshop which focused on phonics. 
This week we have enjoyed sharing the story of Five Minutes’ Peace. We have sequenced the key events in the story and created a bubble bath for Mrs Large!
Huge thanks to all parents for coming on Tuesday for session 2 of our literacy workshop which focused on nursery rhymes. We made Humpty Dumpty play dough and jigsaws! Please join us if you can this coming Tuesday 7th October at 2.15pm- focus will be phonics. Many thanks!
We had a great time at our very own tiger tea party after sharing The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
We have had a wonderful start to the school year. It is lovely to see the children working hard and helping each other. We have also used our home languages to help our friends who are new to English.
We have been exploring our new character’s feelings and how they have changed through the book. Marcy started off excited for an adventure but quickly changed to fear and worry when it went dark and she reached the cave.
Year 6 have been writing in role this week and today they took on the role of a friend, giving advice to Rose Blanche after she told us what she had seen in the forest.
In English, we read the story Leon and the Place Between by Grahame Baker-Smith. One of our activities was to create a poster for the circus.
In year 3 have started our new book. The children looked at pictures from this book and came up with some great questions and predictions. We are all very excited to read and learn about this book.
The children had lots of fun choosing what to send the Lighthouse Keeper for lunch. They choose what food and sent it down in a basket – all while trying to avoid the seagulls. We talked about what healthy choices we could make and choose his lunch very carefully. Oooooh! 🧺 🏝
We “stepped into” some pictures from our new book. We answered some questions, asked our own questions and made some predictions about our new book.
We read a book that helped us understand what refugees are and how they might feel and spoke about the possible reasons for why someone might need to become a refugee.
Today we looked at different features of a pirate and labelled them.
We loved exploring our clues and objects that linked to our new English topic. We made great predictions about what the story will be about and shared them with each other.
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In Reception literacy this week we are practicing continuing a rhyming string and enjoying lots of rhymes. We are sharing a story called Oi Frog and below is a link if you’d like to share the story at home.
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This morning we voted as to whether we would climb the beanstalk or not! The children standing said they would climb and the children sitting down said that they would not!
This half term we are learning about the Victorians, but we don’t want to forget what we have learnt about our previous topic on the ancient civilisation of Baghdad. So, we played a game called Quiz, Quiz, Trade. This game involves asking questions to see how much we have remembered. We did really well!
This week we are learning about Jack and the Beanstalk. Below is a link to the story if you would like to share it at home.
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Year 3 had a lovely day celebrating world book day. We read the story ‘101 Dalmatian’s’ and completed a book review on this. We also created our own dogs out of cups and black circles. In the afternoon, we learnt a new art skill in pointillism to paint our own Dalmatians.
All the costumes were amazing, thank you for yours efforts.
Today we had a visit from Cruella De Vil who wanted to steal all of the Dalmatian puppies, luckily the classes were able to find all 101 of them and saved the school! What an amazing World Book Day 2025. 
Today the children have had lots of fun dressing up as their favourite characters. We enjoyed learning all about the 101 Dalmatians and trying to find them around our school. We had lots of fun designing and decorating our own Dalmatian dogs with paint and cups!
Year 6 have drawn their own versions of some books they have enjoyed reading for World Book Day.
Today we used freeze frames to think about how people might have felt during the announcement of WW2. We looked at the different reactions in our book ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’ and compared different emotions. 
We worked hard to plan and write a non-chronological report. We worked in groups to write a specific paragraph.
Yesterday we looked at clues for our new book ’Goodnight Mr Tom’. We wrote predictions and today we discussed evacuations from cities to the countryside and arguments for and against. We invited in Mrs Ridley to walk down our ‘conscience alley’ to hear our reasons. 
This boy told me that he loved reading this book because the story reflected his own life experiences. Books that represent our communities matter so much.
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Year 5 have been looking at the poet Benjamin Zephaniah this week and yesterday we got the chance to read some of his poems. We all agreed that most of his poems have the message of justice and equality for all. 
This week as part of our People Who Help Us topic, we have been learning about the jobs of the police. We have also shared and re-enacted the story of What the Ladybird 🐞 Heard as part of our learning. Below is a link to share the story at home.
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Today we learnt about the global supply chain and the different stages our products take to get to us (the customer). We debated which part of the supply chain was the most important and how fair the pay was. Our class debate was very passionate! 
We discovered some clues to our new story today! We made predictions and discussed if the clues reminded us of any other stories too.
Before we begin writing our own diary extracts, we read and annotated a model text for language and organisational features.
This week we are sharing the story of The Snowman in Reception. Here is a link if you would like to share the story at home. ⛄️
https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/snowman-eng.pdf
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We have been practicing reading words and using our phonic knowledge to match the correct words to the pictures.
We have looked through all our clues for our upcoming book… Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. We will be discussing new vocabulary such as racism, segregation, civil rights, controversy and many more! 
We used role play to decide if the witch from our class text should give back the stolen happy endings. We thought of lots of reasons for and against.
The Reception children of RAG have enjoyed listening to the marvellous Christmas story, ‘The Polar Express’. They even managed to retell the story in sequence, from start to finish, using pictures. Well done!
We really enjoyed writing these dual narratives in Year 6, we used two characters from the book we read together in lessons. We hope you enjoy reading them.
For our PSHE lesson we are celebrating differences. In previous weeks we have spoken about racism, bullying and rumours and now we are researching a range of countries and what their culture looks like.
We have just started work on writing our own dual narratives, based on the characters and events in Neil Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel. Such powerful openings! We can’t wait to get writing more, they will be incredible to read.
Yesterday we had a great time at the International Slavery Museum. We had a workshop in the ‘legacies of the transatlantic slave trade’ and then had time to explore the museum with our task sheets. 
We really enjoyed listening to the story of The Lonely Beast. We acted out different parts of the story and retold the story to each other
We came back into our classroom and found that someone or something had been in there! We looked at the disaster that had been left behind and asked questions about what we thought had happened!
We found
– a globe
– a map
– broken biscuits
– teapot and cups
– footprints
and…. a lot of mess!!
We are enjoying sharing the story of The Gruffalo this week! We have painted The Gruffalo and are describing The Gruffalo as part of our literacy and writing about what we can see. We also shared The Gruffalo song 🎵 and below is a link to share this at home.
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We are working hard on learning our set 1 sounds and blending sounds together to make words.
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We found some items in our box to help us with predicting what our new class text is about.
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Author of ‘The late crew’ Rob Ferguson came to visit our school today. Some of us were so excited to even get our books signed by a real life author! We even designed our own alien that we could use in our stories. 
In Geography, we have been finding out about renewable energy sources: why they are needed alongwith the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Today we have looked at different poems for national poetry day!
We simply had to share a few more pieces of work as we think they are truly fantastic! Detailed information which is extremely well presented. Great work Year 6!
After researching mountain gorillas and adaptions of animals, we have just begun to write our own explanation texts. Keep an eye out for the finished pieces.
Anna and Crocodile asked us for our help today. We thought about how to make a sandwich, created some plans, made some sandwiches and of course had to taste test them! Yum yum!
Fabulous turn out at our phonics meeting. Keep an eye on the app for each weeks videos and activities.
We went on a noun hunt and then acted out verbs to help us to identify the difference between the two.
Today we made our own maps in preparation for our instruction texts. We had to think carefully about where the gold was hidden and then give our partner instructions to find it.
We are enjoying our new phonics groups and have worked so hard on our fluency this week.
We retold the story in teams and performed the story to our friends.
We have learnt all the Makaton signs for the animals in our story and then used them to retell the story.
This week we have been looking at the story ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. Outside we built a bridge to cross to the green grass. We made signs for the goats from the troll showing they can’t cross the bridge.
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To celebrate the end of learning of Goldilocks and The Three Bears we hosted our own Teddy Bears Picnic. We had party food and danced with our teddies. We had a wonderful afternoon!
This week we have been working hard with our friends to put our Supertato story pictures into the correct order.
We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Neil Gaiman’s version of Hansel and Gretel, so much so, it led us to writing our own dual narratives. We are so proud of the writing we have produced.
We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.
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For Remembrance Day, we read the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and after discussing the content, we embellished the poem with images of poppies.
We retold the model text. We used picture clues to help. We are ready to write our own circular story now #smithdownwriters #smithdownreaders
We worked in teams to make a better map than Anna and Crocodile #smithdownreaders #smithdownwriters
On Friday we put Anna and Crocodile in the hot seat #smithdownreaders @clpe1
This morning we found some treasure chests in our room. We found some clues about our new story. #smithdownreaders @misshath2 @SmithdownPr
We really dressing up and getting in role as Little Red and the Wolf #smithdownreaders
Thank you to all of our families who came to our first Reception parents Literacy workshop. We hope to see you all again next week for our second session! #smithdowneyfs #smithdownreaders
Thanks to all parents for coming along to session 4 of our parental literacy workshop which focused on writing.Please join us on Wednesday 22nd October for our final literacy workshop. The time will be 2.15-3pm. Many thanks.
On Tuesday we visited Central Library in our city centre with some of our families and we had a great time sharing books, having a look around the children section of the library and even going onto the roof to see the skyline of Liverpool.
