Our Reading Vision

At Woodside, we believe that every child should develop a lifelong love of reading. We want all of our children to have the skills to be able to read for pleasure. We have the highest ambitions for all of our children and strive for inclusiveness. We believe that all children should be able to read and enjoy age-appropriate texts by the time that they leave Woodside. We want to inspire our children to be confident and fluent readers, inspiring their inspire imagination and opening doors to new and exciting worlds. Through reading, our children will develop a love of language through the texts that they read.  Reading is a key priority and children have access to a diverse range of books and reading material which link to their interests so that they feel an intrinsic motivation to read. We have close links with Oswestry Library and Booka and they offer advice on the latest books, authors and reading-related activities. Our school is designed to be a place where pupils can engage with reading and enjoy a book. We strive that everyone in the school – staff included – sees themselves as a reader. We have developed positive relationships between teachers and children and teachers and families as we are fully aware that families have a strong influence on reading for pleasure. As a school, we have a validated reading and phonics scheme that is rigorous, systematic and used with fidelity that achieves strong results for all pupils. Phonics Bug/Bug Club is used across the school so that all children are taught how to read and if a child falls behind at any point in their reading journey, they receive intervention quickly so that they get back on track. 

Phonics and reading at Woodside 

We aim for all of our children to speak and write fluently so that they can participate fully as a confident, fluent member of society. We understand that through verbal and written English, our children can develop their ability to communicate their ideas and emotions to others. At Woodside, we understand that reading is the key to learning and future success for our children. We are committed to fostering a love of literature and reading for pleasure to develop our children culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. In line with the National Curriculum for English, our intent is that all children:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate

Characteristics of a reader

• Good phonics skills and knowledge to enable rapid decoding
• Builds a wide range of rich vocabulary
• Fluently and accurately reads a variety of texts across all curriculum disciplines
• Actively engages with texts to make sense and make meaning of the ideas contained within them
• Reads texts to learn, discover, explore, and enjoy

How we teach reading at Woodside This has been developed with reflection upon the National Curriculum (2014) and Bug Club.