Lawley Primary School and Nursery

At Lawley Primary School, guided reading in Years 2–6 is delivered through the Pathways to Read programme. This approach ensures that reading is high‑quality, consistent and ambitious, enabling all pupils to develop strong comprehension skills and a lifelong love of reading. Texts often support current English lessons providing links and a wider exposure to relevant vocabulary and concepts which in turn supports writing progress.  

Guided reading sessions are built around carefully selected, high‑quality texts that expose pupils to a wide range of authors, genres and contexts. These texts are chosen to challenge pupils appropriately and to broaden their vocabulary, knowledge of the world and cultural understanding.

During guided reading, pupils are supported to:

• Read fluently and with increasing confidence
• Develop secure comprehension skills, including retrieval, inference, prediction, language choices, structure and explanation
• Discuss texts thoughtfully using subject‑specific and ambitious vocabulary (which is pre-taught)
• Justify opinions and respond to the ideas of others through structured discussion

Teachers explicitly model reading strategies and use targeted questioning to check understanding and deepen thinking. Talk is central to guided reading, allowing pupils to explain their ideas, clarify meaning and build confidence as articulate readers.

Formative assessment is ongoing and informs future teaching and summative assessment data is also collected termly  ensuring that pupils receive the right level of challenge and support. Guided reading is carefully sequenced to build on prior learning so that pupils know more, remember more and can do more as they progress through the school.

This approach ensures and maintains focus on:

• A coherently planned reading curriculum
• Explicit teaching of vocabulary and comprehension
• High expectations and inclusion for all pupils
• Preparing pupils effectively for the next stage of education

Through Pathways to Read, guided reading at Lawley Primary School develops confident, fluent and thoughtful readers who are well equipped to access the wider curriculum and succeed beyond primary school.

In EYFS and Key Stage 1, pupils use Bug Club (Active Learning) as part of a systematic and structured approach to phonics and early reading, both in school and at home. Pupils are grouped according to their current phonic knowledge so that teaching and resources closely match their learning needs. Ongoing assessment ensures that groups are flexible and responsive, enabling pupils to make strong and sustained progress. Each week, pupils take part in regular adult‑led guided sessions with teachers and teaching assistants, alongside purposeful independent activities that consolidate and apply learning. This approach ensures reading is taught consistently, builds confidence and supports all pupils to develop secure early reading skills.