“Through reading, children discover new perspectives, deepen their understanding of the world and find the words to express who they are and who they wish to become”

 

Our Reading Curriculum

At Wolston St. Margaret’s, our reading curriculum is built around high-quality texts that reflect a diverse range of voices, experiences and cultures. Through these rich and engaging books, our children are immersed in language that inspires curiosity, empathy and a lifelong love of reading.

 

The Teaching of Phonics

From the earliest stages, we teach reading systematically through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme. This ensures that all children develop strong decoding skills and reading fluency.

 

Reading Comprehension

As our children progress, fluency is further developed through regular opportunities to read widely and often, enabling every child to grow in confidence and skill as a reader. Our pupils deepen their understanding through carefully structured whole class reading lessons that focus on key comprehensions skills such as prediction, inference, retrieval and summarising.

 

Reading and Oracy

Exposure to high-quality vocabulary is a core part of every reading experience. Children encounter and explore new words in meaningful contexts, enabling them to use this rich vocabulary which they can then internalise and use in their own speech. The use of ‘Book Talk’ enables our children to hear good models of oral expression, allowing them to rehearse and rephrase sentences to develop and improve their own speaking skills. Our reading spine allows our children to immerse themselves in a shared source of content which fuels debates, discussions and other oracy activities.

 

Reading and Writing

Our reading spine is linked to our ambitious ‘Learning Means the World’ curriculum, which then feeds into our writing curriculum. This golden thread enables our children to use key vocabulary from their learning in their own writing from a context that has been experienced by all. By connecting reading and writing, we empower pupils to express themselves with confidence and creativity and to become thoughtful, articulate readers and authors.

 

Reading for Pleasure

We place great importance on reading for pleasure, ensuring books are celebrated and shared across the school. We want our children to love books and see themselves as reader, taking joy in discovering new stories, authors and ideas. Reading areas, author visits, story times and a culture of book talk help every chid to develop a personal connection with reading – one that lasts a lifetime.