Reading
At Awsworth, we believe that reading is the key that unlocks learning across the curriculum and opens doors to future opportunities. Our aim is for every child to leave us as a confident, fluent and enthusiastic reader who reads for both purpose and pleasure.
We achieve this through a carefully planned reading journey that begins with high-quality phonics teaching, develops fluency and comprehension skills, and nurtures a lifelong love of books.
Learning to Read: Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised
In the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, we teach reading through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.
Little Wandle is a systematic synthetic phonics programme that teaches children to:
- Recognise letters and the sounds they represent.
- Blend sounds together to read words.
- Segment words into sounds for spelling.
- Develop confidence and accuracy when reading unfamiliar words.
- Build fluency through regular practice and repetition.
Children participate in daily phonics lessons that are carefully sequenced to ensure they build knowledge and skills progressively. Reading books are closely matched to the sounds children have been taught, allowing them to experience success and develop confidence as readers.
Children who require additional support receive timely intervention to ensure they keep up with their peers and continue to make strong progress.
Becoming Fluent Readers
Once children have secured the foundations of phonics and can decode accurately, our focus shifts towards developing reading fluency.
Fluent readers are able to:
- Read accurately and automatically.
- Read with appropriate pace and expression.
- Understand what they are reading.
- Read confidently across a range of texts.
Children continue to read regularly with adults and participate in guided reading opportunities that help them develop:
- Prosody (reading with expression and meaning).
- Stamina for reading longer texts.
- Vocabulary knowledge.
- Reading confidence.
We recognise that fluency is the bridge between learning to read and reading to learn. Therefore, fluency teaching remains an important part of our reading curriculum throughout Key Stage 2.
Reading in Key Stage 2
As children move through Key Stage 2, they take part in daily whole-class reading lessons designed to develop deeper understanding of increasingly challenging texts.
Our reading curriculum exposes children to a rich range of:
- Fiction
- Non-fiction
- Poetry
- Classic literature
- Contemporary texts
- Diverse authors and perspectives
Through carefully structured lessons, pupils learn to:
Vocabulary
Understand the meaning of unfamiliar words and explore how authors use language to create effect.
Retrieval
Locate and find evidence directly from a text.
Inference
Read between the lines by using clues from the text alongside their own understanding.
Prediction
Use evidence to make informed predictions about events, characters and outcomes.
Explanation
Discuss author choices, themes, language and structure.
Summarising
Identify key information and explain main ideas concisely.
Children are taught to justify their answers using evidence from the text and to engage in thoughtful discussion about what they read.
Reading Across the Curriculum
Reading is not confined to English lessons. Children regularly apply their reading skills across all subjects, enabling them to:
- Access new knowledge.
- Develop subject-specific vocabulary.
- Research independently.
- Think critically about information.
- Become confident learners.
By encountering a wide range of texts across the curriculum, children strengthen both their reading skills and their understanding of the world around them.
Reading for Pleasure
At the heart of our approach is a commitment to developing a lifelong love of reading.
We want children to see reading as something enjoyable, rewarding and valuable—not simply a school subject.
We promote reading for pleasure through:
- Daily story time.
- Class reading books.
- Well-stocked and inviting reading areas.
- Library visits.
- Author and book celebrations.
- Reading recommendations from staff and pupils.
- Opportunities to discuss and share books.
- Reading events and themed activities.
Our staff act as reading role models, sharing their own enthusiasm for books and helping children discover authors, genres and texts that inspire them.
Our Reading Vision
We want every child to:
- Learn to read with confidence and accuracy.
- Develop fluency and strong comprehension skills.
- Read widely and often.
- Enjoy books and stories.
- See themselves as readers.
- Leave our school with a lifelong love of reading.
At Awsworth, we believe that reading is the foundation for success, imagination and lifelong learning.