Throughout school, a strong focus on teaching reading fluency is incorporated into the reading curriculum.  Fluency at Christ Church is progressive and we ensure children are fluent at each stage of their reading journey before progressing to their next level.

Through direct teaching, our systematic synthetic phonics program ensures children can decode quickly and accurately whilst giving children the opportunity to re-read books.  Decodable books they take home allow children to practice their blending and grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know so confidence in reading and fluency is quickly developed.

Children that need extra practice in fluency are identified throughout school.  These children may receive additional small group intervention or one-to-one support.

Within reading lessons throughout school, children are constantly introduced to new vocabulary and language structures and taught how to decode unfamiliar words.  They are given time to re-read texts and practice fluency with reference to our ‘6Ps’.

Our ‘6Ps of Fluency’ consists of 6 strands:

• Pace
• Punctuation
• Pitch
• Power
• Passion
• Pause

We offer a variety of experiences to our children to develop reading fluency for example:

• singing songs, reciting rhymes and learning poems by heart
• adults reading aloud (with repeat refrains in EYFS and KS1)
• paired reading and group reading
• guided reading practice with an adult  
• repeating reading of familiar books
• echo reading, choral reading, jumping in  
• teaching decoding strategies e.g finding the root word and it’s meaning
• reading theatre (steps building up to a performance of what they have read)
• performing poetry
• access to well stocked libraries