• Archaic Language: Older texts (50–100+ years old) featuring antiquated syntax, unfamiliar vocabulary, and obsolete cultural references.

• Non-Linear Time Sequences: Stories that use flashbacks, time jumps, or non-chronological pacing rather than a straight timeline.

• Narratively Complex: Books featuring unreliable narrators, multiple shifting perspectives, or intertwined, separate plot lines.

• Figurative/Symbolic Text: Stories operating heavily on abstract, allegorical, or metaphorical layers.

• Resistant Texts: Material written to deliberately withhold easy answers, requiring the reader to hunt for clues and assemble meaning from ambiguity

In addition to reading to our children every day we also timetable reading for pleasure sessions across the week and include time for our children to visit and enjoy our well-stocked school library.  Children can borrow books to share at home or read independently.  Books available for children include recommended star authors, picture books, poetry books, graphic novels, fiction and non-fiction. 

Each month we have a selection of recommended reads in a central location within the library.  Themes for these books include: Black History Month, Wellbeing books, Sport and Hobbies and Remembrance.

Teaching reading

Alongside our phonics teaching, we have mapped out our key texts for teaching of reading.  These texts bridge the link between reading the writing.  Each year group has a carefully planned set of objectives which link to these texts.  In our reading lessons we focus on teaching skills in retrieval, inferring, predicting and understanding vocabulary.

Our Teaching Reading Texts document shows our overview each year for which texts we use in each class.