Reading for Pleasure 

A number of our staff volunteered to work on an Open University project in conjunctions with other local schools.  The project focused on developing stamina, understanding and vocabulary through reading for pleasure.

As a result of the involvement and through our focus on improving reading progress and attainment, we have implemented a number of strategies across the school.  These include:

• Reading spaces in each classroom - Throughout the school each class has a space which has been furnished with cushions, bean bags, lights and decorations to make a quiet, comfortable space in which to read.
• Top books children should read - each year group has a set books which have been chosen as high quality texts to share with the children.  These books have been chosen using the Pie Corbett Reading Spines and Doug Lemov's 'Reading Reconsidered' guidance on text selection.  They have been chosen to introduce the children to new authors, extend their knowledge of authors they know and will include a range of complex texts linking with the 5 plagues of the developing reader.  This list is constantly evolving and updated with new books.
• Birthday books - we have updated our birthday book scheme to include books from the Reading Spines or by the same authors on each top book list to enable children to develop their own collection of quality texts at home.
• Kindle readers - We have purchased a set of Kindle readers to enable children to access books linked to our  class lists.  These books will be able to be accessed as audio books which will give access to all children to high level quality texts.
• Shared class novel - Time is built into the timetable each week to share a class novel.  Each class will select their novel from their class list.

For further information on 'Reading for Pleasure' please refer to Top 10 Reading Book Spine.