At Southwood Primary School we believe that reading should be a fundamental part of childhood and a skill which should be developed to support lifelong learning.

Our aim is to develop and embed a strong, sustainable reading culture within the school community.  Confident and competent readers will foster a love of reading through a rich and varied experience of texts, in which they are empowered to exercise freedoms of choice and independence.

Inspiring children to read is their fundamental right.  It underpins all learning and secures a good trajectory for personal development and an understanding the world in which they live.

Reading Passports

Each pupil has a bespoke and dedicated reading passport to record their reading for pleasure.  It contains pages for the children to write a mini-review upon completion of their book, which is then checked by the teacher.

Recommended Reads & Other Texts

Each year group, from Nursery to Year 6, have 10 recommended reads as well as a wide range of other fiction and non-fiction texts located within the classroom book corners which form the basis of Southwood’s Reading List. 

These texts have been compiled to enhance, develop and reinforce understanding of genres, plot, author intent and vocabulary. Each text has been carefully chosen from using CLPE and The Book Trust to enable children to develop a love of reading and to ensure that they have a wide variety of texts to choose from. Discussions around the texts encourage children to really focus on identifying key aspects, drawing links and making comparisons, all of which are skills that the children are tested on at the end of each Key Stage.

Author & Poet Focus

As part of creating a reading school and a love of reading, each year group also has identified key authors and poets. These authors and poets build up a broad and balanced knowledge of a range of writers which provide the children with a variety of texts that they can then compare and contrast. The author books will be read aloud to the children, on a daily basis, to reinforce all the skills that are being taught during reading. They will support the development of high order questioning and critical thinking based around a text.