Reading at St Laurence’s

At St Laurence’s, we believe reading is the foundation of all learning and a doorway to lifelong curiosity and success. We aim to build confident, fluent readers who not only decode texts accurately, but enjoy reading for pleasure, insight and exploration.

Early Readers

At St Laurence’s, early reading is taught through Unlocking Letters and Sounds (ULS), a systematic synthetic phonics programme validated by the Department for Education. Children receive daily phonics lessons that follow the ULS progression, building their skills step by step.

To support fluency, children take home fully decodable books matched to the sounds they are learning. This ensures success and confidence as they practise reading at home. Teachers regularly assess children’s phonics knowledge to identify next steps and provide timely support.

We also prioritise reading for pleasure through daily story time, engaging book corners and a rich selection of high-quality texts in each classroom.

Developing readers

Our developing readers engage in whole-class reading sessions, working with high-quality texts that span fiction, non-fiction and poetry. They explicitly practise reading domains such as retrieval, inference, summary and vocabulary, while also developing fluency and expression. Our reading spine ensures students are exposed to a wide range of literature and authors.
We also run reading-for-pleasure initiatives: book clubs, author visits and reading displays which help foster a love of reading across the school.

Celebrating reading and enrichment

Reading is much more than a lesson — it is a culture. Throughout the year we host World Book Day celebrations, attend local reading events and display student-recommendations of books. We believe that children who read widely become confident thinkers, creative authors and culturally aware citizens.