Reading

How We Teach Reading at Waterside Academy

At Waterside Academy, we are committed to fostering a lifelong love of reading while equipping pupils with the skills and knowledge to understand and enjoy a wide range of texts. Using a carefully structured curriculum, we teach children to become fluent readers, capable of comprehending, analysing, and responding to texts with confidence.

Our approach to reading is built around developing core competencies, including vocabulary, retrieval, inference, and comprehension. These skills are taught systematically and revisited across year groups to ensure long-term mastery. Pupils are introduced to a variety of high quality texts, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, enabling them to explore different genres, themes, and perspectives.

Fluency is central to our teaching. Pupils engage in guided reading sessions where they practise reading with expression and accuracy, supported by explicit instruction in decoding and vocabulary development. High-quality texts are chosen to broaden pupils' understanding of language and deepen their comprehension.

We prioritise teaching children how to draw meaning from texts through strategies such as predicting, summarising, and making connections to their prior knowledge. Pupils are encouraged to engage with texts critically, considering authorial intent, identifying themes, and making comparisons within and across texts.

Reading is closely linked to writing, with pupils often using what they have read as inspiration for their own written work. This integration reinforces their understanding of language, structure, and purpose in both reading and writing.

Our teachers use ongoing assessments to identify and address gaps in pupils' reading skills, ensuring tailored support is provided when needed. This might include small-group interventions or focused practice on specific skills, such as inference or retrieval.