Whole School Literacy Texts

These are the core set of texts which drive our English Curriculum  They are studied in depth, read repeatedly with younger children and read aloud by teachers to children so that they have the opportunity to be completely absorbed in the magic of the story.

They have been carefully selected by staff after consideration of existing exemplified reading spines, linking them where appropriate to the wider curriculum and also because they have struck a chord with the teachers who use them passionately and enthusiastically to promote a love of reading with their pupils.

Many of the books operate on different levels, giving the satisfaction of a good story, whilst also allowing the deepening exploration of emotions and wonder, with increasingly deeper themes.

Some of our books are romping reads, some cover challenging themes, whilst others will touch the reader deeply. We want our core texts to provide a stimulating springboard for our writing curriculum and challenge our children to express themselves in a range of genres. Above all, we want our core texts to be remembered and treasured, with many that will stay with the reader forever.

These documents set out in detail the progression of reading skills as taught from Reception to Year 6. We use a range of sources in order to provide our children with a rich variety of texts. In  order to demonstrate the specific skills required to become a competent reader, we follow VIPERS.

VIPERS is a range of reading prompts based on the 2016 Reading Content domains found in the National Curriculum Test Framework documents for KS1 and KS2. VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s Reading Curriculum.

What are Vipers?

VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

VIPERS stands for

Vocabulary

Inference

Prediction

Explanation

Retrieval

Sequence or Summarise

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc.  As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions.  They allow the teacher to track the type of questions asked and the children’s responses to these which allows for targeted questioning afterwards.

They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand to improve their comprehension of texts. At St. Philip’s, children’s exposure to VIPERS starts in Reception where specific reference and appropriate sentence-stems are also used alongside our phonics programme, Little Wandle. As shown in this document, these skills are built upon and deepened progressively each year to ensure that pupils leave primary education with strong comprehension skills, across a range of texts. Our curriculum is designed so that key, fundamental knowledge is often revisited, allowing deliberate opportunities for retrieval practice, therefore embedding key learning.

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc. Teachers use VIPERS to support children’s comprehension skills in whole class reading lessons. Children are exposed to new vocabulary, retrieval and inference questions in every session. The children then further develop the different aspects of VIPERS through carefully chosen tasks often linked to specific year group shared texts.

  Key Stage One                                                        Key Stage Two

Book Study Texts

At St. Philip's, we want our children to love the excitement of entering a new world where only a book can take them. We want them to become assured readers, fluent and responsive to the written word - to develop an empathy with the characters, to inhabit their lives and to visualise a world painted by words. 

We have carefully chosen a broad and balanced range of texts that each class will study during their time in that year group, from Year 2 to Year 6, from the following genres:

• Historical fiction
• Fantasy fiction
• Humour
• Adventure
• Gothic and ghostly
• Modern stories
• Classic stories
• Social commentary
• Folklore

Each book is covered in a half-termly unit, with a focus on shared, modelled, teacher-led reading.

Whole School Shakespeare Study

One of the highlights of our year is our Shakespeare study. Timed to take place around Shakespeare's birthday, each class studies their own set play. The stories, characters and themes of Shakespeare’s plays are brought to life through a combination of drama games and classroom activities, planned to produce excellent written outcomes. Studying Shakespeare affords great opportunities to significantly improve pupil language acquisition and skills.