At Westroyd we are dedicated to ensuring all of our children are fluent readers, enabling them to not only comprehend what they are reading with ease, but enjoy reading! Reading takes place throughout the school day as part of direct teaching and learning, but also for the pure purpose of enjoyment! Last weekend I cleared out my eleven-year old daughter's bedroom, reluctantly moving picture books and story books off the bookshelves at her request, to be replaced by an array of beauty products in brightly coloured bottles! Time for me to accept that she is no longer five, and she no longer wants or needs the story of the Gruffalo or Horrid Henry in her bedroom! So I arrived at school with three big boxes of books on Monday, which the teachers quickly emptied and topped up their class libraries!  I therefore, have had a delightful week walking about school, seeing the children reading these new texts and telling me how much they are enjoying them! 

This week we had a visit from our consultant, Grace, at the West Yorkshire Reading Hub. She comes in and supports our teaching of phonics using Read, Write, Inc. She was completely blown away by the standard of teaching by our teachers and teaching assistants and, therefore, was not surprised when we showed her the data of how well the children are doing. In Reception, Year One and Year Two we have already exceeded our end of year phonic targets! In fact, 80% of the children are working above where they should be! Which is fabulous! Miss Hollingshead is doing a super job, not only early reading but promoting phonics and reading across the whole school with strong progress being made by all.