At Westover, learning English is of the highest priority. We believe that learning to read, write and communicate effectively underpins all other learning.

All of our children have a daily English lesson focused around writing and grammar. Reading comprehension is taught separately throughout the week.

In addition to this, there are daily opportunities to practice and enjoy reading, including in our structured reading lessons when all children read independently, as a group or with the teacher every day.

Reading occurs at other times of the day too. We strongly promote reading and writing across the curriculum so children have a sense of purpose and can apply their learning.

We teach all our children to become effective communicators, working with them on their speaking skills in a range of contexts so that they can express themselves with clarity and confidence.

Our staff value the importance of speech and language development and are supported to articulate clearly with close attention to accurate grammar and pronunciation in speech at all times of the school day.

Reading is at the heart of Westover. Our curriculum is driven by high quality texts. High priority is given to teaching phonics, using a systematic synthetic approach. Reading pleasure is important to us, as is increasing children’s access to books.

We strive to ensure that every child leaves us not only with the ability to read independently, fluently and with good understanding, but with a genuine passion for books. All of our children should be able to understand and talk about a wide range of texts. We want them to develop a varied and rich vocabulary, to read a range of authors and genres and to broaden their understanding about the diverse world in which they live through the knowledge they gain from texts.

We have high ambitions for all our children; we do not put ceilings on what they can achieve and we believe every child has the ability to make great progress. Parents and carers play a key role in supporting their children to develop both decoding and comprehension skills. We aim to establish a home-school partnership which promotes an understanding of how to enhance the skills being taught in school. We recognise that not all of our families are able to support their child; no child is penalised for this, instead we increase the support we give at school.

It is our aim that all children leave Westover as resilient and confident readers, able to make informed choices about what they have read and well-prepared for their secondary education.

The more often that children can read and practise their reading skills, the more fluent readers they will become, which is essential in enabling them to read for pleasure. 

At Westover, our expectation is that children read at home 5 times a week for 10-15 minutes at a time. Please ensure that this is recorded in their home reading record each day.

In school, class teachers will check the records daily to see what the children have read at home and read any comments from parents. We have a badge incentive scheme to encourage our children to read.

Please see below for how many times they need to read for each badge:

At Westover we strive to help all our children develop into articulate and imaginative communicators, who are well-equipped with the basic skills they need to become life-long learners. 

We focus on the building blocks of writing: secure phonological awareness, taught in a systematic way; a focus on handwriting and good presentation skills; the importance of the writing cycle: plan, draft, edit and publish; articulation of ideas before writing with priority given to broadening vocabulary; grammar, spelling and punctuation being applied with accuracy.

We aim for our children to develop a love of language and the written word, through a high quality, text-based approach. Reading and writing is inextricably linked and we guide our children’s reading to influence their writing and increase their joy in writing.

Opportunities are designed to write for a real purpose and in response to experience both inside and outside of the classroom. We ensure that children develop an understanding of how widely writing is used in everyday life and, therefore, how important and useful the skills are that they are learning.

We have high ambitions for all of our children. Our goal is to ensure that all children regardless of their starting points, aim for the highest standards in writing and reach their full potential. We want to provide them with the skills necessary to be successful writers and to prepare them for their secondary education.

At Westover, we believe that phonics should be taught in an engaging and systematic way, using a multi-sensory approach to our youngest children.

By Year 2, children will move on to the spelling approach as created by Little Wandle.

Read more about our curriculum.