Broad Town Church of England Primary School

At Broad Town School, we aim for children to become ‘lifelong learners’.  As a school, we are currently really focusing upon Reading for Pleasure- thinking more about reading buddies, book talk, author recommendations and widening children’s experiences of reading a range of authors for pure enjoyment. To that end, we will no longer be continuing with our ‘Battle of the Books’ reading challenge.  From 2022, children will have greater freedom of choice of the texts, both fiction and non-fiction, they select in school,  alongside their ‘school reading scheme book’.

These are just some of the reasons Reading for Pleasure is so important :

• Escapism and enjoyment                                - Relaxation
• Developing vocabulary                                   - Widening knowledge of the World
• A shared experience with others                     - Finding out new things 
• A life skill                                                       - Encouraging empathy
• Developing a positive ‘habit’                         - Supporting mental well being
• Developing reading stamina                           - and much more ………

Indeed Reading for Pleasure is the single indicator of a child’s future success.  We have already carried out Reading Pupil Voice Surveys across the school and analysed the outcomes of this. The findings are really interesting and are enabling us to plan and move reading forwards in our school and ultimately build a whole school reading community including children, parents, staff and governors as well as members of the local community.

We hope to build our school reading community by:

• Giving the children more opportunities to talk about books they have read both at home and in school. Chatting about books and sharing recommendations will be encouraged more frequently
• A greater range of children’s authors will be introduced to the children
• More whole class story sharing time, with less interruptions/questions from the teachers – at the request of the children !!
• Creating reading environments that motivate and engage children in reading as a pleasurable activity, including further developing outside spaces for reading and relaxing
• As staff, we will endeavour to know our readers even better. What do children like to read? When do they like to read? What authors do they enjoy? How can they be challenged further?
• Mrs Rosie Law will be our 'Reading for Pleasure' governor advocate – sharing her love of reading with the children
• Mr Tuck already shares stories with the children in Class 1 via Zoom and we would always encourage parents in all classes to share stories with the children if you have any spare time to give
• We would like to encourage ‘Book Talk’ at home between our pupils and their parents. Children of any age love to be read aloud to as they clearly showed us in their pupil surveys!
• We are setting up a peaceful reading area in the hall where groups of children will be invited to relax and read for pleasure
• Once a term, after school, we would like to put out children’s books for a ‘book swap’.  The first ‘book swap’ will be on Thursday 27^th January. If you have any books in good condition that you would like to donate to school for this purpose (no more than 3 books per child initially so that we are not inundated!) please send them into your child’s classroom on the day. The books will then be put outside and children can select books to take home and keep.  There will be a donation box should you wish to make a contribution for the books you take. All proceeds from this donation box will go straight towards extending the range of brand new fiction and non-fiction books available to the children in our classrooms.