Writing at Sudley Primary School

At Sudley Primary School, reading is the foundation of our writing curriculum. We teach children to write through the exploration of high-quality literature—both fiction and non-fiction—ensuring they are exposed to engaging, vocabulary-rich texts. This approach empowers teachers to deliver lessons that provide regular, varied writing opportunities.

In daily lessons, children develop a deep understanding of the writing process. They immerse themselves in a text type, analyse its strengths, and identify the key features needed to create their own writing in a similar style. Using WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like), they study examples of effective writing before planning and producing their own. Editing is an integral part of the process, with children encouraged to refine their work for accuracy, structure, and style, showcasing their growing grammatical knowledge and applying vocabulary drawn from the texts they have read.

Teachers model writing at every stage, demonstrating how reading informs writing and making clear that each lesson contributes to the final outcome. This approach is underpinned by Ready Steady Write, an evidence-based framework for teaching writing.

Reading Across the Curriculum

Reading is a whole-school priority at Sudley Primary School because of its profound impact on children’s lives. Our reading curriculum gives equal weight to all aspects of reading development—particularly the importance of fluency as the bridge between decoding and understanding.

Our approach is grounded in the principle that reading is the result of multiple strands working together—word recognition and language comprehension. We recognise that decoding alone does not make a child an effective reader. The transition between key compositional skills—such as vocabulary, background knowledge, syntax, and comprehension—is carefully planned so that children move beyond simply “functioning” as readers to becoming effective readers who can think critically, infer meaning, and engage deeply with texts. This underpins everything we do, ensuring reading is not just a mechanical process but a gateway to understanding, creativity, and expression.

 Whole Class Reading Lesson

Alongside our class text for pleasure, we use a Whole Class Reading approach to ensure every child has access to high-quality texts and rich discussion. This model moves away from traditional guided reading groups and instead brings the whole class together to explore a shared text. This approach complements our class novel for pleasure by providing breadth and variety. Texts may link to individual interests, the wider curriculum or address contemporary issues relevant to children today. While the class text builds stamina, resilience, and a love of story, Whole Class Reading sessions develop specific comprehension skills and expose children to diverse voices and styles.

Curriculum Reading

Each half term, every KS2 class reads a novel for pleasure, in addition to daily reading lessons. These texts are carefully chosen for their quality and challenge, often slightly beyond the children’s independent reading level, to build vocabulary, resilience, and stamina. Reading is well-paced to maintain momentum and engagement, helping children see books as a source of enjoyment.

Guided reading sessions are replaced by Whole Class Reading, where grammar is taught in context, vocabulary is explored, and comprehension skills are refined through evidence-based answers.

Home Reading

Our Home Reader library offers a wide range of texts known as our 'Recommended Reads'. These are specific to a year group and also feature 'shorter' and longer reads'. This variety helps children experience different genres and encourages families to view reading as a leisure activity. We do not operate a staged reading scheme but more of a scaffolded library where staff recommend books and children select according to their interests.

We ask parents to return home readers daily, as they may be used in lessons. Books can be changed as soon as they are finished. In Years 5 and 6, home reading includes our Beloved Books collection—a curated list of 24 titles we believe every child should enjoy before moving to KS3. These books are shared in lessons and used as home readers.

If you have any questions about reading at Sudley Primary School, please get in touch.