Early Reading & Writing inc. Phonics

At Willowpark we aim to teach children to:

Read with fluency, accuracy and understanding.

Develop an understanding and appreciation of a wide range of literary and non-fiction texts.
We teach phonics using Read Write Inc. resources to support our programme and is an important part of our daily English lessons.

early reading and writing website 346687 1.pdf

Reading at Willowpark

Reading and phonics are taught as an integral part of our English lessons using quality texts from a wide range of authors and genres. Children are encouraged to explore texts from our rich and varied literary heritage including poetry and play scripts and to discover books written by both well-known and up and coming authors. Non-fiction texts are chosen to match topic themes, current events and children’s interests.

In addition to the teaching of reading skills and comprehension through English lessons, children read texts which are accurately matched to their reading ability and phonics stage. 'Free Readers' in Key Stage 2 have a wide variety of texts to choose from and are encouraged to read texts from a variety of authors.

Once children have progressed on to ‘Free Readers’ there is a large selection of books in each classroom for children to choose from and they are encouraged to read a variety of text types and books by different authors.

Children read to an adult several times a week in school according to their needs and we ask that parents and carers support their child at home in line with our home-school agreement.

Reading at home

Our policy is that all children from Reception to Year 6 read with an adult every night, this includes weekends and school holidays. Regular practice allows children to develop their reading skills as well as enjoying a wide variety of texts.

A record is kept in each class of which children have read each night and prizes are regularly awarded to children who have read to an adult every night. Please look in the front of your child’s reading diary to see more information about how you can ensure your child is involved in our reading rewards.

Read with fluency, accuracy and understanding.
Develop an understanding and appreciation of a wide range of literary and non-fiction texts

We also keep a record of the % of each class that has read every day - the class with the highest % at the end of the week is awarded a 'Golden Book' for their class from a list that the children have complied with their teachers!

Our GOLD Reading Award

completion of reading award willowpark 375888 .pdf

Our Pupil Reading Council

Our Pupil Reading Council help us to monitor children's reading diaries and our reward bookmark system that encourages children to read regularly to earn bronze, silver and gold level rewards.

They also read stories on a weekly basis in other classes, help to organise whole school events such as book swaps and World Book day and are really good role models to others with our 'Reading Everyday' expectation - they do a great job!

Reading Council

National Storytelling Week 2023

To celebrate National Storytelling Week, each class in our Academy focused on their Class Author/text and chose a book they have been reading and enjoying together. They talked about the story, the plot, the characters and how they felt about the book and if they would recommend the text to someone else. Working together, each class has produced a book review display about their chosen text, which we have displayed outside our School Library - we think these are great!

Our reviewed story books -