Reading | Woodside Academy

At Woodside Academy, reading is a top priority and is a key driver for our curriculum. Therefore, we have a Reading leadership team comprised of the English Lead, Phonics Lead and Early Years Lead.

It is our intention to ensure that by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

We therefore intend to encourage all pupils to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop: knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; to establish an appreciation and love of reading; to gain knowledge across the curriculum; and develop their comprehension skills. We are committed to providing vocabulary rich reading material so children are exposed to a wide variety of texts.

At Woodside Academy, we are passionate about reading.

Book Week 2023

The theme for this year’s ‘Book Week’ was reading for pleasure. Throughout the week, we had a visit from Natalie Newman who co-authored Lark the Shark with her son (Henry) and children were able to buy signed copies. M&M Productions brought us their poignant Dicken's classic, Oliver Twist and we had quite a few Dickensian characters when we dressed up for World Book Day. Our "Reading in an Unusual Place" photo competition proved that you can read absolutely anywhere. Through the week staff shared their love of reading and of books with children who we hope will take this inspiration and keep reading and improving their schools. We also had record sales at our book fair which means we will have more books for children to read in school and also for our weekly home reading prizes.

Book Week

Our Book Week is one of the most popular events of the year and each summer we encourage every child to join in the Big Summer Read with an inflatable obstacle course as a reward for all those who participate. This usually results in our school having the highest uptake for the read in the whole borough. Our extension enabled us to extend and restock our library which has a parents and child session after school every Tuesday. We regularly take children to Chadwell St Mary Library, have termly book sales and encourage children to read at home regularly.