At Brightwalton our curriculum aims to instil a love of stories, books and reading in every child and ensures that they are given every opportunity to leave our school with the key reading skills needed to be successful in life. We provide children with access to good quality stories, books and storytelling that will spark their imagination and model rich language and vocabulary so that children understand and embed it for future use.

There is a clear and consistent approach to reading across the whole school. Children are read to and heard reading as a class, in a group, one to one with adults or independently for both learning and pleasure. Starting early in Reception, children are systematically taught the synthetic phonics, knowledge and skills required to begin blending sounds for reading words. This knowledge is built on and refined throughout Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. As children move further through the school they will focus less on decoding and more on the comprehension of increasingly challenging and complex texts independently. They are encouraged to show a detailed understanding of a wide variety of texts, the language used and the effect the author is trying to convey.

We also aim to inspire children to become strong writers, who can express their ideas clearly to the world. We aspire to unlock the author in every child, encourage pupils to love writing and to write confidently across the curriculum. Reading aloud to engage children’s interest in stories, using inspiration from real life or imagination and encouraging reading to build ideas and vocabulary are all fundamental to how we teach writing. We aim to give children the skills and confidence to communicate their ideas so that they can respond effectively to the challenges of the future.