English

At Woodside, the vision across our curriculum is :

• To provide a learning environment that promotes equal ambitions for all pupils to learn and achieve through our vision.
• To provide a safe space for our children to develop:
  • A lifelong love of learning
  • A natural curiosity for the world
  • A sense of community
  • To live life in all its fullness

Reading

• At Woodside we believe reading is central to everything: it is the key to learning and the key to achieving our aspirations. We strive for all our children to develop into confident and competent readers and to enthuse and inspire them to possess a real love of reading.
• Through our progressive and challenging reading curriculum, we also aim to build emotional, intellectual and cultural awareness so that all of our pupils can enjoy and participate fully in the world around them.

Phonics

At Woodside, we believe there is no greater skill that we can teach a child than how to read fluently and for pleasure – thus opening a world of endless learning possibilities and academic success.

We understand that if children have a positive start with early reading and phonics, it will have endless benefits across all areas of learning. Numerous studies have shown when children learn to read at an early age, they have greater general knowledge, expand their vocabulary, become more fluent readers, develop problem solving skills, grow in self-confidence and flourish with creativity and their imagination.

At Woodside we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme.

Writing

At Woodside, we believe that writing is an essential skill and the ability to write independently with confidence and accuracy is a tool which will support a child throughout their lifetime. It is our intent that students leave Year 6 wanting to, and being able to, express their thoughts and ideas clearly and creatively through the written word, for a varied range of purposes and audiences.