READING AT WESTLANDS

Reading at Westlands…

At Westlands, we are passionate about reading. Learning to read and reading to learn is central to our whole curriculum. We aim for all our children to develop a love of literature and become life-long readers. It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read with fluency, confidence and understanding. We believe the journey starts and continues by exposing children to a wide range of texts read aloud in our daily read, coupled with effective learning through a systematic phonics programme (Sounds Write) in EYFS and Year 1. We strive to given children in all year groups the opportunity to explore a range of rich texts, linked to our themes and beyond, with core texts at the centre. These texts are carefully chosen to promote interest, foster oracy (learning to speak and speaking to learn) and provide an understanding of our world. We aspire for our readers to become independent researchers, communicating their knowledge and curiosity to others.

The ‘Sounds Write’ linguistic phonics programme (https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-71-why-sounds-write-.aspx ) is used in EYFS and Year 1 to give children a firm foundation in reading words. This also forms a basis for supporting pupils in Year 2 and KS2 who are working below the expected level for word reading. This programme develops alongside a wealth of other reading opportunities and a drive to foster a life-long love of reading.

Every year group has sets of books that directly reflect the progression in our phonics programme (Published by ‘Dandelion’ and ‘Sounds Write’), as well as a range of fiction and non-fiction age-appropriate texts from a wide range of authors.

We aim for every classroom environment to entice our children to read and give them ideas to deepen their understanding of texts, as well as broaden their reading experience.

These classroom reading areas include questions and sentence stems to deepen children’s understanding and develop their talk around different types of texts. This may be through questions, sentence stems or recommendations.

These areas are particularly promoted during weekly ‘Love of Reading’ sessions, where children are challenged to try something new, work on their ‘Year of Reading’ challenge (see recommended book lists that the children are challenged to read in a year) or present their recommendations to a group.

We further develop our class and library reading resources every year to match our children’s needs and interests, and add new and exciting texts. This ensures a rich and varied immersion into texts that stretch, inspire and nurture.

Parents play an extremely important role in developing their children as life-long readers, so we provide parent workshops; advice, targets and comments through every child’s reading record and a recommended book list for every year group. Class teachers are always on hand to lend support and further advice.

Click on the Year Group for Reading Challenge Booklist:

EYFS YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 YEAR 4 YEAR 5 YEAR 6

EYFS & KS1 READING SPINE KS2 READING SPINE