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Francois Walker

Volume of reading and exposure to a wide range of books.

Updated: Feb 23, 2023



Volume of reading

Any successful reading curriculum will ensure pupils read and study many books.

When I speak to teachers about organising a reading curriculum, often referred to as a reading spine, they understand the need to read a wide range a text types. But, time and time again the question is asked, ‘How do I plan so that pupils read a mix of classics, modern stories, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and play scripts?’



It’s easy. A great reading curriculum plots out the books pupils will read from the time they step out of phonics until the end of their primary career. This gives us 5 years to expose pupils to a wide range of text types and to ensure that the texts are progressively more complex the older pupils get.

Here in the UK we typically have 6 week half terms. This rule is broken roughly twice a year where a half term is extended by a week. In these additional weeks, we study a poem with each year group. The other terms we alternate between fiction and non-fiction books. Then we have the Christmas week. During this week, we help pupils become excellent readers by reading the Christmas story with them and studying different versions of the nativity. Finally, children study two play scripts in Key Stage 2. The first is typically in Year 4, which pupils perform to the school community before the Easter holidays and the other at the end of the academic year, which Year 6 perform.

A well planned reading curriculum

A well planned curriculum which fulfils the requirements of the National Curriculum, and helps pupils read widely could look like this:


Autumn 1: Story by a modern author

Autumn2: Non-fiction text and The Christmas Story

Spring 1: Classic story

Spring 2 Play script and poetry

Summer 1: Non-fiction text

Summer 2: Story by a modern author.

Working in partnership

Intent - Implement - Impact

In Master Readers we work in partnership with reading leaders to plan a successful reading curriculum before the whole school are trained in how to deliver it. This ensures the Intent of your curriculum is establish before we develop reading experts through the training sessions. This guarantees success and leads to excellent outcomes for pupils.

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