Developing a love of Reading at St Vincent's

At St Vincent’s, we promote reading for pleasure and this is at the core of our reading curriculum. We are passionate that every child learns to read regardless of background, ability or need. We believe that extensive reading opportunities and exposure to a wide range of print and texts makes a vital contribution to every child’s educational achievements.

“The act of reading will enrich your life. Become a lifelong learner and a reader.”
? Lailah Gifty Akita

Research shows that the ability to read can have a major impact on children, their futures and their life experiences. At St Vincent’s the children have access to a wide range of texts and print which include:

• Age related fiction and non-fiction, including poetry
• Diverse texts, which represent ethnicity, family backgrounds, age, gender, disability and religion.
• Web-based texts and videos that are part of our online learning platform subscriptions.
• Magazines and leaflets
• Interactive learning comprehension activities
• Peer reading each other’s work

During ‘Stop, Drop and Read sessions’ the children enjoy reading a class novel which is often based on the author of the month and these can be seen displayed in our wonderful reading corners around school. Our reading corners are inviting and cosy – somewhere to escape to another world and truly get lost in a book. Reading corners include a variety of different genres and authors that cover a wide range of interests. Research has proven that a stimulating environment is essential to support fostering a love of reading. At St Vincent’s we have ‘Reading Champions’ in each class from EYFS to Y6. Our reading champions ‘champion’ reading within our classes and carry out various different roles, organising and sorting books in the reading corner, making recommendations and helping other members of the class to make selections. The children also have ‘reading buddies’ that support each other in various different ways in different year groups. This is another wonderful way to share recommended books, discuss favourite authors and themes and share a wide variety of different texts.

Enrichments

At St Vincent’s we celebrate World Book Day every year and the children love dressing up as their favourite character or making props from their favourite story. Our World Book Day activities are engaging, well planned and have incorporated author visits, live events and all children ‘share a buddy story’ with another year group which includes the Nursery. Throughout the year, we plan local visits to libraries, Waterstones bookshop as well as regular visits to our own library and E-Library for each year group. Author visits are also popular and we have welcomed many different authors at St Vincent’s including Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

In our school, children are inspired and excited by our ‘secret reader’ appearances. The children love listening and sharing stories with members of our local community and guessing who they are. These special moments bring our community of parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, and family closer together to build a strong reading community. We have also welcomed ‘Shakespeare’ our ‘Paws for Reading therapy dog’ to our school - we even got to read to him!