“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr. Seuss

Reading at Widden Primary School

At Widden we aim to give our children the opportunity to read and hear  a diverse range of texts including those from other cultures. We want them to see themselves within the pages of the books they read. We encourage children to develop a rich dialogue about the books they read, their personal preferences and recommendations.

We aim to foster community links by engaging family members with their children’s reading journey, both through reading in the home and the welcoming of families to reading events within school.

We encourage children to take ownership of their reading by recording what they have read as well as choosing appropriate texts for them from the school and local Library.

Our curriculum aims to equip children with all the skills necessary to decode and understand age related texts. Through well planned, sequences of learning children will develop their vocabulary, recount and retelling skills, sequencing,prediction and inference skills. They will evaluate the books they read and develop a comfortableness with discussing their ideas and opinions about what they read. In Nursery children are introduced to quality texts and encouraged to develop a love of hearing stories. We build on this foundation in EYFS by helping the children to develop a secure base of phonics on which to build their reading. We continue the journey in Ks1 and KS2 where reading broadens to include grammatical awareness, sentence structure and comprehension skills.

We teach children to be readers. They make responsible choices about what they read. They read a wide range of texts, whilst discovering what they enjoy. They read for pleasure and share with friends what they enjoy. They act upon the recommendations of others to further develop their reading tastes.

We are careful to ensure that children who fall behind in their reading journey are quickly identified and supported to catch up. We do this through phonics interventions up to year 3, and reading interventions in KS2.

Reading Spine

Reading for pleasure is known to have a significant impact on children’s attainment and life chances. We strive for every child to have a love of reading in our school and reading is central to everything that we do. We have developed a ‘reading spine’ of key books that we believe will enrich the children’s experiences, bring enjoyment and nurture a love of reading. 

The reading spine was compiled using a wide range of themes using fiction and non-fiction texts and our drive to represent diversity in the books children read and the authors who have written them. Each year group has a set of core texts that ensures the children experience a range of high quality texts and authors during their time here. Our core texts and additional texts are shared in English lessons and during whole class reading. 

Story Time

At Widden Primary School, we recognise the impact of reading to children and ensure that this is part of our daily routine in all classes. Books are selected from our year group reading spines and are shared with the children daily. Additionally, children are read other stories and books in assemblies with other classes. This is an opportunity for children to be exposed to a wider range of books from authors the children may not have heard of and foster their love of reading.