Reading at Wirksworth Junior School

"Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible." Barack Obama

"A book is a dream that you hold in your hands." Neil Gaiman 

The two videos below can be accessed by clicking on the picture: these videos include information about our school reading books, and ideas for supporting your child with their reading at home. 

Curriculum Intent

At Wirksworth Junior School, our reading curriculum aims to develop pupils’ word recognition and language comprehension skills so that they become fluent, confident and critical readers. This, in turn, will enable our pupils to gain a broad knowledge of the world around them, providing them with the foundations for future learning. Most importantly, we will foster a love of reading, through sharing our own passion for reading, creating and embedding a positive reading culture throughout the whole school.

Our school motto is Creative. Caring. Curious. We make every moment count.

By exposing our children to high-quality literature and rich, ambitious vocabulary, we will provide them with the language they need to be able to express themselves and articulate their thoughts, feelings and ideas in creative ways. Our shared reading texts, books chosen to enrich our wider curriculum subjects and whole class reading for pleasure books have been carefully-selected to encourage our pupils to develop empathy and show caring towards the people and subjects they learn about. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum, which has been designed to ensure that our pupils are provided with opportunities to be curious, whether that be through introducing them to a wide range of authors and books or using reading to help feed their curiosity about the lives of others and the wider world.

Curriculum Impact

Class teachers use strategies such as questioning, verbal feedback and marking of written work to assess pupils’ knowledge and skills. Pupils also complete PIRA tests (Progress in Reading Assessments) towards the end of each term. A gap analysis is completed, which details the specific areas of reading that pupils need to work on (such as retrieval, summarising or prediction). These assessments are used to inform teachers' planning, lesson content and next steps.

The subject leader monitors reading provision across the school to ensure that our curriculum and teaching is having a positive impact on our pupils’ enjoyment and achievement. This is done in a number of ways, such as visiting classrooms to observe the learning environment and reading corners; looking in pupils' books to monitor their written work; and having discussions with pupils about their learning.