Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. 

It should be offered to them as a precious gift.  

^{Kate DiCamillo}

At The Whiteoak Academies, we recognise that the life skill of reading is one of the most important things that we teach our children. It opens up to them worlds of wonder and curiosity and enables them to independently gather information to further grow their own minds.

The sharing of carefully chosen texts, helps children across our family of schools to develop an appreciation of our rich literary heritage and exposes them to the best that children’s literature has to offer in terms of a fiction and non-fiction diet.  Through reading, our pupils have the chance to grow emotionally, intellectually and socially. Our aim is for them to fall in love with reading and develop reading for pleasure habits that extend far beyond their primary years.

At the Whiteoak Academies, we understand that learning to read is the not-so-simple process of decoding words (word recognition) and then unpacking their meaning (language comprehension). It requires our children to develop multiple skills simultaneously in order to read successfully. Here, you can explore The Whiteoak approach to the teaching of reading under three main headings: Learning to decode, Developing fluency and Developing Listening and Language Comprehension.