At Bridgewater Primary School, we believe that a high-quality English curriculum should develop children’s love of reading, writing and discussion.

One of our priorities is helping children develop and improve their all-important reading and comprehension skills.

We also recognise the importance of nurturing a culture in which children take pride in their writing, can write clearly and accurately and can adapt their language and style to suit a range of contexts.

In addition, we want to inspire children to be confident in the art of speaking and listening and to use their communication skills to further their learning.

We believe that children need to develop secure skills in English by experiencing a curriculum which follows a clear pathway of progression as they advance through the primary curriculum.

We believe that a secure basis in literacy skills is crucial to a high quality education and is one of the most important tools we can give our children in order to participate successfully in society. 

Reading intent

At Bridgewater, we value reading as a key life skill, and are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers. We believe reading is key for academic success and we are determined that every pupil will learn to read, regardless of their background, needs or abilities. We believe it is essential that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject, ready for their forthcoming secondary education.  

We intend for children to: 

• have been taught the skills to decode words through our phonics programme, which matches or exceeds the expectations of the English National Curriculum and early learning goals;  
• have read a sequence of books, including books that progress their phonics knowledge and their ability to read High Frequency Words (HFWs); 
• be active readers, with the awareness of the key reading skills they are using (based on VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Sequence or Summarise); 
• have access throughout their primary school experience to books that enable them to progress in and develop their reading skills; 
• be exposed to books in which they see reflections of themselves and of our diverse world;
• develop a love of reading;
• develop confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types;  
• be able to read fluently, with expression;
• extend their love of reading at home; we enable this by providing books and support for parents where needed so they can foster reading as a lifelong habit for their children.