At Westwood we value the importance of reading and hope to inspire and motivate our children to develop a passion for reading.
We use Read Write Inc for reading and children are assessed and grouped accordingly to ensure that their phonics teaching builds on prior knowledge.

Whilst children read on a daily basis through RWI phonic lessons, children also read and enjoy books through many different ways such as; 

• One to one reading with an adult 
• English lessons with quality text focus 
• Reading buddies for shared reading 
• Daily story sessions 
• Reading through other subjects 
• Outdoor reading 
• Library Lodge reading 
• Enchanted Forest group reading sessions 
• Online Reading games and activities 
• Exploration of different texts

Reading at home is highly beneficial to your child's development. We reward reading at home and encourage all children to share a book with someone wherever possible. When reading with children it is always useful to ask your child questions to challenge their thinking and their understanding of the text. You could ask:

What has happened in the book so far?

What do you think will happen next?

Who is your favourite/least favourite character and why? 

Is the book Fiction (story) or Non Fiction (Factual)? 

Who is the Author or Illustrator? 

What could be a solution to the problem i the book? 

Can you recall any facts? 

Have you learnt anything new from the book? 

Would you recommend this book to anyone? Why? 

Our Library Lodge

We are incredibly proud of our Library Lodge. It has a huge variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction suitable for all ages. The children visit the Library Lodge once a week to choose and exchange books. They also enjoy visiting it and looking at the different books as well as sharing stories with their friends.

Communication Book

Every child at Westwood is provided with a communication book. This book is to be used to communicate messages from school to home and home to school. This is also to be used as a record of when your child reads at home and at school. 

In the communication book you will find guidance around our reading and phonics scheme Read Write Inc including some top tips to support your child's reading at home. You will also find the 'RED WORD' book marks as seen below. These are on sight words that children  need to be able to read and spell relating to their phonics book band. 

The National Curriculum states pupils in Year one should be taught to:

• apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words
• respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes (letters or groups of letters) for all 40+ phonemes, including, where applicable, alternative sounds for graphemes
• read accurately by blending sounds in unfamiliar words containing GPCs that have been taught
• read common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
• read words containing taught GPCs and –s, –es, –ing, –ed, –er and –est endings
• read other words of more than one syllable that contain taught GPCs
• read words with contractions [for example, I’m, I’ll, we’ll], and understand that the apostrophe represents the omitted letter(s)
• read books aloud, accurately, that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words
• reread these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading

The National Curriculum states that children in Year Two should be taught to:

• continue to apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words until automatic decoding has become embedded and reading is fluent
• read accurately by blending the sounds in words that contain the graphemes taught so far, especially recognising alternative sounds for graphemes
• read accurately words of two or more syllables that contain the same graphemes as above
• read words containing common suffixes
• read further common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
• read most words quickly and accurately, without overt sounding and blending, when they have been frequently encountered
• read aloud books closely matched to their improving phonic knowledge, sounding out unfamiliar words accurately, automatically and without undue hesitation
• reread these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading