Reading for pleasure is a hot topic in many schools at the moment, and as such has become over complicated and the subject of unhelpful advice about ‘tricks’ to get pupils reading. You don’t need tricks. Just teach reading properly. Download my free advice based on my years of successfully teaching and leading reading.

This is a comparison of the National Curriculum for Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6. It sets them side by side, so you can see the differences between lower and upper KS2 clearly. I have also made suggestions for the key focus of each year group to ensure progression.

This is a SATs style question paper to use when reading Land of Roar by Jenny McLachlan. Great for when you are reading this brilliant book to your whole class as it helps keep them focused and to practice comprehension questions. I used with Year 4, but would work well with Year 5 too. This covers the first half of the book. PDF of questions and PDF of answers. Make it into a booklet.

These are SATs style questions to use as your read aloud to your whole class. Could also be used as pupils read the book to themselves. Print PDF to make a booklet. I used with Year 4 but would work well with Year 5 or independently in Year 6.

A set of SATs style questions for the second half of Land of Roar by Jenny McLachlan. These are great for giving your class a focus as you read the text whole class. Come as a PDF to print to make a booklet, and an answer sheet. I used with Year 4, but would be great with Year 5 too.

This resources contains two ppts. One explains why we should teach reading to our whole classes and details what this looks like in terms of individual lessons and over the course of a week. The second ppt is an example of a week’s worth of whole class reading lessons. It is worth looking at the ppts side by side to see the explanation and what it would look like in your classroom.

Explicitly teaching reading fluency is an essential part of your reading teaching. This is a PPT you can use to develop your practice in teaching fluency, or can use if you are a reading leader to help your whole school. It identifies barriers to fluent reading, and what you can do about them.

This is a stand alone interview/observation lesson to promote a love of reading and promote reading a wide range of books. This lesson will help you to introduce books to pupils that they many not normally consider reading and get them talking about books. The most powerful way to get reluctant readers going is to get their peers excited and talking about books. This lesson aims to do just that!

This is a lesson I have used successfully in interview. It is a nice stand alone lesson designed to teach quatrain poetry to a mixed Y4/5 class. You could easily alter it to suit either year group, or any KS2 year with a bit more alteration. It has NC links included, a word bank to support some pupils and a challenge for the more able. The children love the dog and you don’t have to call him Herman! :-)

Do you have trouble coming up with reading comprehension questions? Wonder how to structure questions or make sure they are linked to the National Curriculum? This is a useful set of documents. The comprehension question guide puts questions in order of retrieval, inference and structure and language. It also links to the content domains and SATs style question stems. The order to teach reading skills document does what it says, breaking down teaching reading in a more fine grained way. Finally, I have included some reading vocabulary, as it is important to develop a vocabulary to talk about reading that is consistent through your whole school.

This is a 2 week unit of work written for Year 4 but could be altered for Years 3 or 5. This unit references the LKS2 National curriculum programme of study so you can see you are covering the curriculum. It includes reading poems by Brian Moses, performing poems and drafting and editing your own version of a Brian Moses poem. A total of 10 lessons, but could stretch to 12. Included are 2 ppts, all resources and a 2 week plan. You can just pick this up and go!