Reading   

At Ropsley Primary School, reading is a key priority and sits at the heart of our curriculum. It is woven throughout all subjects, as well as taught explicitly through daily guided reading sessions from Year 3 to Year 6. These sessions last between 30 and 45 minutes, depending on the text being studied.

All Key Stage 2 staff have been trained in the Ashley Booth Reading Scheme. You can find out more about this approach here:

• Meaningful Non-Fiction Reading Sessions

• A KS2 Reading Curriculum – The Teaching Booth

Our Weekly Reading Structure

• Mondays and Fridays:
  Children enjoy their class novel and take part in rich ‘book talk’ discussions with their teacher. These sessions encourage thoughtful discussion and develop skills such as retrieval and inference.

• Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays:
  Sessions focus on a variety of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Children explore linked texts—three pieces that connect through a shared theme, author, or text type (for example: The Vikings, Michael Morpurgo, or Poetry). This approach exposes pupils to a broad range of high-quality literature and supports cross-curricular links with our wider topics.

Each session begins with a focus on vocabulary, helping children to understand and use rich, ambitious language that they might not encounter in everyday life. This has proven particularly beneficial in developing comprehension and confidence, especially as pupils move towards Year 6.

The remainder of each lesson explores the key reading domains through a variety of question types—Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, and Summarising—known collectively as VIPERS.

What are VIPERS?

VIPERS is an acronym that supports the teaching of the six reading domains in the National Curriculum. These areas help children develop strong comprehension skills and a deeper understanding of texts.

V – Vocabulary
I – Inference
P – Prediction
E – Explanation
R – Retrieval
S – Sequence (KS1) / Summarise (KS2)

VIPERS is not a reading scheme but a framework that ensures teachers ask a balanced range of question types. It helps pupils become familiar with these approaches and enables teachers to identify strengths and next steps in comprehension.

Reading for Pleasure

In addition to guided reading, every class dedicates at least 15 minutes each day to sharing their class novel. This separate reading time allows pupils to experience high-quality texts, read aloud by their teacher, and fosters a lifelong love of reading—for both pleasure and information.

In addition to our reading lessons in KS2, we also provide children with:

• Daily opportunities to read for pleasure
• Daily rapid catch up for children in years 3-6 (for any child who is not a fluent reader)
• Regular story times known as 'Book Clubs'
• Regular, open ended discussions about stories and books.
• Opportunities to read and discuss a wide range of genres including poetry and non-fiction.
• Books that the children take home are carefully chosen to match the children's interests and their level of fluency

We also have a number of reading enrichment activities, including:

• Visits to the school library.
• Visits from authors and poets throughout the school year.
• Participation in local reading competitions including the library summer reading challenge.
• Book fairs.
• Celebrations for World Book Day!