What does reading look like at West Town Lane? 

At West Town Lane we are committed to enabling our children to blossom into confident, fluent and joyful readers. Children begin their reading journey by daily immersion in our successful phonics programme while concurrently being exposed to high quality texts during daily class book readings.

Having mastered phonics, children then access a wider range of increasingly challenging and cross-curricular texts and continue to develop and master comprehension skills (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, sequence and summary). Reading is an integral part of every lesson. It takes place across our broad and rich curriculum, in order that children emerge from our school as accomplished readers with a wide vocabulary and a love of reading. 

We believe our systematic, embedded reading habits allow children to make excellent progress and we’ve developed a culture that will enable children not just to read for pleasure, but also access a wide range of different text genres. They will then have the motivation and understanding to enable them to enter into their vocation of their choice.

If a child was to fall behind in their phonic or reading acquisition, they receive targeted support to close the gaps identified through rigorous assessment. Programs such as ‘ULS Targeted Interventions’ and ‘Reading Recovery’ are employed by a specialist reading support teachers to assist learners early and effectively.

What can you do?

We encourage the children to read at home every day and ask that parents/carers record this at least 3 times a week in reading records. Many families feel it is easier to get into a routine of daily reading at a time that suits them. 

In addition to listening to your child read, it is highly recommended that you ask some questions during and at the end of the read. This will help children engage with the text and think about it, which will increase their enjoyment and prepare them for such questions they may have to tackle in school. There is a list of example questions at the bottom of the 'Reading Expectations' document that you use to help improve your child’s comprehension skills. Please also find below a breakdown of the main 3 question types we use in school during our Guided Reading sessions.

We also have a dedicated ‘Reading Army’ of parent/carer volunteers who come in to read with the children during any spare time they may have in the week. They have found this very rewarding. If you would like to join, please email office@wtlacademy.bristol.sch.uk

Phonics

At West Town Lane we use daily systematic synthetic phonics session from Nursery to Year 2. This enables children to make rapid progress in recognising letters and their associated sounds. In early 2022 we adopted Unlocking Letters and Sounds, a fully validated scheme approved by the Department for Education. To find out more information about ULS please see the 'ULS Parent Info' and 'Phonics Progression Map' below.