At Godwin, we follow the National Curriculum with reading being at the heart of what we do. We have developed a book-based curriculum, which is driven by carefully selected, high-quality texts. We believe this approach immerses teachers and children in language-rich learning, which fosters a whole school love of reading and writing. In addition to this, in the EYFS and KS1, reading is taught through the Read Write Inc. programme.

In our school we make time to read stories every day. Stories provide a wealth of language that we don’t use in everyday talk. The more stories, poems and nursery rhymes children know well, the more easily they will be able to understand what they read.

Each year group’s curriculum is built around a series of high-quality texts, from a range of authors. These texts have been specifically selected for the following reasons:

• to reflect our diverse school community
• to provide adequate, age-appropriate levels of challenge
• to ensure a breadth of coverage across year groups and key stages, including fiction, non-fiction, and picture books
• to develop children’s spoken and written vocabulary
• to expose children to a range of authorial styles
• to provide pupils with high-quality models for their written work
• to foster a lifelong love of literature