Reading

The Wyndham Approach to Reading

Reading is the gateway for children, that makes all other learning possible.

Our Intent

At Wyndham, we know that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s development, understanding and appreciation of the world around them. It helps children to unlock doors across the academic curriculum as well as supporting them in their wider personal development. The significance of this skill and disciplinary literacy across the curriculum is key to our pupils’ accessing and activating knowledge and vocabulary both now and in the future. It acts as a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves as confident, articulate and aspirational citizens. 

Our ambitious reading curriculum is designed progressively and cumulatively to enhance the lives of our pupils in becoming fluent, successful readers who are able to read to learn as well as enjoy the written word across a range of texts. By acquiring the skill of word recognition as early as possible, this ensures that our children have freed up more cognitive capacity in their working memory in order to think, manipulate and engage in more complex ideas and knowledge. This is not only within reading lessons, but across the entirety of our WONDER curriculum from an early age and thus, increases their store of knowledge in long-term memory.  

Wyndham’s reading curriculum begins as soon as children enter our school in nursery with children enjoying being read to daily through high-quality texts, retelling stories with their friends and teachers within the continuous provision and developing their love for and awareness of nursery rhymes through ‘Talk Homework’. Crucially, Phase 1 phonics is also explicitly taught, centring around children’s phonemic awareness to ensure there is a strong foundation to build upon for later phonics teaching. As children progress into Reception and Year 1, they continue to be taught phonics using Little Wandle. Content is organised and sequenced so that learning builds over time, following a specific progression which supports our children in knowing more, and remembering more. Importantly, phonics teaching is supplemented by regular spelling practice which supports pupils’ knowledge of words within their orthographic store as well as applied within reading practice sessions using correctly matched books alongside highly-skilled adults.  This ensures that our children are not only able to practice using their knowledge of phonics in a purposeful way but children are also supported to develop their confidence within this area in order to become a skillful and competent reader.

Our Reading curriculum within English lessons from Year 1, builds on the foundations laid within the early years by encouraging our children to read frequently and widely, cultivating positive attitudes and self-regulation strategies for children to use as part of their reading toolkit. Pupils’ learning in the English curriculum each half term is designed around a high-quality text. These are chosen based on the ‘Five Plagues of Reading’ which enable children to access and be challenged by a breadth and depth of a diverse range of books with different complexities: archaic language, non-linear time sequence, narratively complex, figurative text and resistant text. These support children in accessing a range of complexities within texts and give them the confidence to do so, as well as exposure to a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Using the books as a key driver, pupils delve deeper into understanding the text through exploring key areas such as language structure, vocabulary and literacy knowledge from the text being studied and are taught to explicitly think like an author. Using this knowledge as well as meaningful experiences within and beyond the classroom linking to the head, heart and hand, pupils are then able to effectively ‘read into writing’ using key strategies and approaches.

Our curriculum is inclusive by design; all children are able to access our progressive learning episodes, make deep-rooted connections to their existing knowledge and practice the skills needed to effectively approach the breadth and depth of our reading and wider WONDER curriculum. For any child who may continue to find reading particularly challenging, we ensure that interventions are put in place swiftly and prioritised to ensure that all children are able to ‘crack the phonics code’ as soon as possible. This enables children to become fluent, skilled and confident readers who are able to access a range of texts across the curriculum and, importantly, enjoy reading books for pleasure. In this way, our Reading curriculum ensures that all pupils are able to create a world of endless possibilities for themselves. 

What does it mean to be a reader at Wyndham?

At Wyndham, our readers:

• Think creatively
• Make connections
• Are curious and ask questions
• Evaluate texts
• Make accurate predictions
• Visualise what is happening

Head	Heart	Hand
The knowledge our children acquire, building sequentially and progressively.	The enriching experiences our children encounter to develop skills for life and grow into responsible, compassionate citizens that demonstrate the values and characteristics to thrive in modern Britain.	The skills our children develop to ensure they are ready for life beyond Wyndham and a lifetime of success.

Please see the documents below which exemplify our ‘Wyndham Way’ for reading, outlining our intent, implementation and impact.

• Wyndham Approaches to Reading