At South Avenue, our curriculum is designed with the intent that each child becomes a caring, confident and curious young person with a passion for learning and achieving. It is our belief that reading is the key to unlocking this passion and curiosity for the world and that reading can open the door to a successful and happy future for our children. 

Our curriculum is carefully designed to ensure that all children leave the school with the ability to read, no matter where their starting point in their journey to reading may have been. In KS1, children learn to read so that in KS2, they can read to learn: as the Rose Review stated, “learning to read progresses to reading, effortlessly, to learn.” Without the initial skill of reading, children will be unable to access the joy of learning so our primary focus is supporting all children not only to read but to develop a passion for reading.
Children’s development of reading is supported every day: by access to a variety of high quality texts which are matched to their reading level; opportunities to read independently and to teachers, teaching assistants and volunteers; modelled reading by class teachers during daily read aloud sessions; the teaching of phonics in early years (taught through the Letters and Sounds programme) and finally through class guided reading sessions to develop comprehension skills. Additionally, children are exposed to high quality texts when they explore topics in science, computing and all foundation subjects.