Intent: Reading for Pleasure

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002)

‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

We seek to nurture a love of reading which will last a lifetime. We wish to enable our children to become confident, motivated readers who can use a range of texts in a variety of ways to prosper through education and on into adulthood. 

At Woodston Primary School, we believe that every pupil has the right to learn how to read – no child will be left behind. 

Intent: Phonics (reading and spelling)

We believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revisedprogression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are taught how to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Woodston Primary School we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development (including vocabulary) for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Intent: Comprehension

We value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they have been taught to read confidently for meaning and encouraged to regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, the leadership of Early Reading is shared by a team of three, headed by the Phonics Lead, who drive the early reading programme in our school (Reception/Year 1 upwards). These people are highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support the teachers and TA’s who teach Early Reading and Phonics, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revisedprogramme.

Intent for Writing

At Woodston, we believe that the ability to write fluently with confidence and accuracy is an essential life skill. Our intent for writing is to ensure that our pupils are able to achieve, or exceed, national expectations as a result of high-quality teaching. Writing is a complex process, which involves the ability to effectively communicate ideas, information and opinions through the written word in a variety of contexts with accurate spelling and clear, legible handwriting. Successful writers understand the social function and characteristics of writing in order to use different genres appropriately, matching it to audience and purpose.  Writing also requires the writer to understand and accurately apply the conventions of syntax, spelling and punctuation.  We aim to equip children with the skills necessary to achieve this throughout the curriculum. 

We believe that high-quality literature plays a key role in developing children’s knowledge and understanding of the writing process, by providing rich language models and structures from which children can develop their understanding of how writing works. At Woodston, we use ‘The Power of Reading’ to support our approach to writing. We believe that Power of Reading provides our children with a rich diet of quality texts from a range of genres, which supports them in finding their own reasons for writing as well as helping them to develop a writing style, which is appropriate for the purpose and audience for which it is intended. As they move through the school, children build on their repertoire of well-known texts, picture books, novels, poetry and non-fiction texts from a range of authors.