At Hillside Avenue we have developed a reading culture throughout the school. We are proud of our beautiful library. Each classroom includes a welcoming book area, a print rich environment, and attractive book displays promoting reading at every opportunity.

Guided reading plays an important part in our approach to teaching reading in Reception and KS1. During these sessions children are taught a wide range of reading skills in ability groups, which they can practice when they are individually reading at home and in school. Moving into KS2, children move to a whole-class reading approach which builds on the reading skills taught before.

We work closely with parents/carers to teach reading this involves:

• A beginning of the year reading meeting in Reception and Year 1 to explain how we teach reading in school and  to try and ensure the continuity and quality of phonics and reading methods at home.
• Shared use of home school reading records throughout the school to communicate progress and next learning steps.
• Sending home a range of texts to suit different reading abilities: children who are learning phonics will take home a decodable book and an authentic text to read with an adult whereas children who are fluent readers can choose from an extensive range of books from our library

Children's reading is carefully tracked and their progress monitored through the Little Wandle phonics programme. Children learn phonics in small, ability-level groups which are flexible and change frequently in response to our assessment. We aim for children to ‘keep up’ not ‘catch up’ and if children fall behind they will quickly receive Little Wandle intervention to help them make accelerated progress. We also use Nessy across the school which targets reading and spelling through a range of fun and stimulating online games. 
Our children have access to a wide variety of individual reading books which are carefully matched to be decodable with the sounds they have learned in phonics lessons. Our reading scheme is Collins Big Cat which is aligned with Little Wandle phonics.