The purpose of whole class reading is to: support the love of reading; the furthering of knowledge in the curriculum; broadening horizons and to increase fluency and accuracy. 

This is achieved at Old Fletton Primary School in Year 2 (B3 & B4) and in Years 3 - 6 as the children are introduced to Tony Whatmuff’s ‘Reading for Inference’ strategies, which develop comprehension skills. 

In each session, the children have opportunities to hear the teacher reading and thinking aloud - providing a model of being a skilled, accomplished reader. They are then encouraged to read in a more meaningful way, both discussing with a partner the strategies they have used and working independently to practise the strategies.  Initially, they apply their skills to questions which focus primarily on retrieval of information, vocabulary and summarising, then as the years progress, more focus is given to inferring, predicting and explaining.

Quality texts, which link to the themes covered in each year group, as well as the ‘Comprehension X Express’ reading scheme, provide the children with a selection of rich and diverse reading material in which to apply the strategies, increasing the complexity of questions as reading skills are mastered.