Reading is a high priority area of our curriculum. Reading is a fundamental skill, used to stimulate children's imaginations and learn to acquire a love for reading.

At Wednesbury Oak, we aim to provide a language rich environment for our children and encourage a love of language.

We monitor the children’s reading at home, and aim to create a home-school link through the use of reading diaries. We encourage parents to be fully active and engaged with us in order to support their child’s continuing development in reading.  Reading awards are announced weekly. These are, our Reading Champions: the class who have recorded the most reading at home, as well as a child from each class, who has shown great enjoyment, confidence or improvement in reading that week.  

Whole-class reading lessons take place across school from Year 3 on wards. Children in Reception and Year 1 undertake reading, as part of their learning in Phonics sessions and Year 2 begin to teach reading explicitly once children are secure with phonics and can begin to comprehend a text with greater independence.

Reading lessons focus on improving children's fluency in reading, as well as building their comprehension skills. The skills of reading are made explicit to children through their understanding and use of Reading VIPERS.

Reading also forms part of our English lessons, as we centre our work in Writing around a quality text, which is studied for at least half term. 

If children are working below their chronological reading age, targeted interventions and support is put in place. Children, in all classes, have access to story time and have a class book: this ensures that reading is effectively modelled to children as well as giving them the opportunity to enjoy being read to. In addition to this, every class has a designated Reading for Pleasure time, known as ROAR – Reach out and Read - where children and staff have the opportunity to read for pleasure.  

At Wednesbury Oak Academy, children take home two reading books. One, a book, chosen by each individual child, from class libraries, as a reading for pleasure book - to share and enjoy in school and at home. The other, a Big Cat Collins banded book, which is appropriate to their reading ability. For early readers, books are linked to their progress within the phonic phases, allowing them to use their developing phonic and whole word knowledge to read independently.