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Reading at Widewell
At Widewell, we recognise that English is at the heart of all learning and central to development. Our English curriculum has been designed to build confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens.
At the heart of our curriculum lies a deep-rooted belief in the power of reading. We recognise reading as an integral cog in the wheel of our pupils’ success—not only within English but across all areas of learning. Our intent is to nurture confident, fluent, and skilled readers who develop a lifelong love for reading and literature.
We aim to immerse our pupils in a rich and diverse range of texts, genres, authors, and voices—both classic and contemporary—ensuring that all children see themselves reflected in what they read, while also gaining insights into worlds and experiences beyond their own. In doing so, we seek to broaden horizons, deepen empathy, and build the cultural capital that is essential for their future success.
Through high-quality teaching, carefully chosen texts, and a reading-rich environment, we are committed to creating a culture of reading for pleasure and purpose. We want our children to read widely and often, to talk passionately about books, and to engage meaningfully with texts.
Our reading curriculum is designed to equip children with the skills they need to decode, comprehend, interpret, and enjoy texts—laying the foundation not only for academic achievement but also for confident communication, critical thinking, and a readiness to thrive in an ever-changing world.
Ultimately, our vision is to foster a community of enthusiastic readers who are empowered, inspired, and prepared to succeed—not just in school, but in life.
The aims of teaching reading, as outlined in the National Curriculum, are to ensure that all pupils:
At Widewell, our pupils start their reading journey from day one through daily phonics sessions following a synthetic phonics programme-Read Write Inc. The Systematic Synthetic Phonics programmes are designed to ensure coverage of the phonic sounds detailed in the National Curriculum in a rigorous, lively and pacy fashion to secure their phonic knowledge and achieve success in early reading.
In Read Write Inc. Phonics pupils:
· Decode letter-sound correspondences quickly and effortlessly, using their phonic knowledge and skills
· Read common exception words on sight
· Understand what they read
· Read aloud with fluency and expression
· Spell quickly and easily by segmenting the sounds in words
· Acquire good handwriting.
In addition, we teach pupils to work effectively with a partner to explain and consolidate what they are learning. This provides the teacher with opportunities to assess learning and to pick up on difficulties, such as pupils’ poor articulation, or problems with blending or alphabetic code knowledge.
In Read Write Inc. Phonics pupils are grouped across the school in terms of their reading ability, meaning they are reading at an appropriate decoding level every day. The homogeneous groups in the phonics lessons help us to focus the teaching and ensure pupils learn to read quickly.
In Foundation we emphasise the alphabetic code. The pupils rapidly learn sounds and the letter or groups of letters they need to represent them. Simple mnemonics help them to grasp this quickly. This is especially useful for pupils at risk of making slower progress. This learning is consolidated daily. Pupils have frequent practice in reading high frequency words with irregular spellings – common exception words.
We make sure that pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and the common exception words. This is so that, early on, they experience success and gain confidence that they are readers. Re-reading and discussing these books with the teacher supports their increasingly fluent decoding.
In EYFS, pupils take part in a baseline assessment and regular assessments continue after this point to ensure that children’s needs are matched carefully. It ensures that pupils can access material at their correct level of phonological understanding and teachers can identify if there is any intervention needed.
The sharing of stories, songs, poems, and rhymes daily through Key Stage One, alongside their phonics provision, ensures pupils are able and inspired to read for pleasure across the curriculum, and at home, as they move through KS1 into Year 2. In both Year 1 and 2, weekly 'book talk' sessions are planned and delivered where children get to familiarise themselves with the VIPERS skills which will be used to help them develop as readers throughout their school journey. In these lessons, children are encouraged to ask questions, make inferences and predict what may happen next. The early teaching of these skills enable our children to transition from RWI to WCR seamlessly whilst also ensuring that children who still need phonics are not disadvantaged from developing much needed comprehension skills.
During Year 2, the aim is that the majority of pupils will move from a systematic, synthetic phonics programme to whole class reading sessions, where strategies like echo and choral reading are employed to increase fluency. From there, and throughout Key Stage Two, we teach the key reading comprehension skills of Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explaining, Retrieval, Summarising and Sequencing throughout a progressive, spiral reading curriculum which covers the National Curriculum objectives as a minimum. Oral and written comprehension tasks develop children’s opportunities to practise and apply their knowledge and understanding and as with all subjects, work is scaffolded or further challenge is provided where necessary, to enable everyone to access quality first teaching within the classroom. Across a half term, staff follow a rolling programme of Fiction/Non-Fiction/Poetry to ensure coverage of a variety of texts which link to the writing genres.
At Widewell, we pride ourselves with having reading at the centre of everything we do and endeavour to ensure that our children leave our school both equipped with the skills of reading as well as with long-term gift of identifying as a life-long reader. Our learners explore and develop an interest in reading and become equipped at evaluating their likes and dislikes, taking their love of reading further. At our school, we believe that book talk is invaluable and we ensure that learners are given time to discuss what they have read. This enables them to fully appreciate and comprehend what they have read whilst developing their critical thinking skills as readers. Our teachers expertly support our children to become fluent readers, who comprehend what they read. They enthuse learners to become readers for themselves and allow children to sit back and be taken to other worlds when engaging with inspiring texts. Through reading a range of carefully-selected texts; exploring texts from a range of authors and reading texts which both mirror and reflect the diverse and multi-cultural world around us, pupils will gain ‘cultural capital’ that is necessary to become educated citizens and to succeed in all areas of the curriculum and in life beyond school.
We, at Widewell, understand that reading brings to life worlds that our pupils may not have visited, ensures pupils encounter vocabulary that they may not have heard before and lead to pupils developing their inquisitive minds and broaden their experiences and knowledge of the world around them. We are passionate about bringing this to life through our protected daily story time and whole school reading events such as our 'Read Your Own Way' challenge and our 'Storybook Shoebox Showcase'.
In our school, we ensure that engaging, diverse, and high-quality texts are shared daily with the whole class as part of our non-negotiable provision to celebrate and signify the importance of reading as well as to continue to expose the children to a diet of rich vocabulary and broaden their experiences. This are planned using our whole school 'Super 6' which endeavours to provide our children with a breadth of authors, genres and topics which are designed to both inspire them as readers and writers whilst encouraging them to ask questions and reflect on the world they live in.
Each class at our school provides an up-to-date and inviting reading space which is used as a sanctuary for children to access books and enjoy reading for pleasure. Class libraries are equipped with books to engage children whilst also linking, when possible, to current class topics. In order to extend our children's ability to access books, we have also created a range of safe and inviting reading spaces throughout the school. This further highlights the importance of reading at Widewell and embedding it as a heart of all that we do.
The impact of our reading curriculum is that children have a positive attitude to reading and enjoy reading which is evident as they walk around the school. They become confident and successful learners who can achieve regardless of their starting points. Pupils from Widewell will be able to read with more skill and so will know more; understand more and therefore do more reading, developing them into the life-long readers we aspire for them to be. Teachers will use a range of formative and summative assessment in reading to assess the children’s understanding and ascertain what they need to do next. During the lesson, through live marking, questioning and discussion, along with tasks, teachers will check that the children have understood the text and can answer questions about what they have read. The teachers and teaching assistants will assess the pupils’ achievements against the lesson objective to ensure reading skills are developing and children are able to apply their skills to reading a variety of texts.
Alongside the daily review of learning, pupils will be assessed more formally using a range of assessment procedures. With the SSPs, pupils are assessed every half term, as a minimum, to ensure that any gaps are identified, and learning matches their needs. In Year 1, children undertake the statutory Phonics Screening Check. Across the year, children will complete a range of testing, including NFER or practise SATs style assessments. These test results, along with the work and assessment from the term, will inform teacher assessment against the National Curriculum objectives.
