“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” – J.K. Rowling

Intent

At St Joseph’s Primary, we are passionate about ensuring all children become confident and enthusiastic readers and communicators, irrespective of their starting point. We believe these fundamental skills not only hold the key to unlocking rest of the curriculum, but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances. Stories are the beating heart of our curriculum and we strive to ensure all children leave St Joseph’s with a love of reading.

At St Joseph’s, we believe that our classrooms should be language rich environments where talk and comprehension skills are planned for. We provide a range of opportunities throughout the day for back and forth talk between children and adults and also between children and their peers. Developing children’s language takes careful and deliberate planning which is why we have mapped out intentional vocabulary from Little Joeys to Year 6.

Reading at home

At St Joseph’s, we work in partnership with parents, so pupils develop a love of books and reading. Daily reading at home, and at school, ensures children make good progress in developing reading skills, whatever their age. Encouraging children to read widely, in and out of school, across both fiction and non-fiction, helps to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live; to establish an appreciation and love of reading; and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Children in EYFS and KS1 take home daily a book matched to their phonic ability. They also take home a book for pleasure from their class library.

Children who have completed their Phonics are supported by their teacher, in choosing a book to take home to enjoy. We encourage children to explore a range of texts comprising of novels and picture books, both fiction and non-fiction. Children are also encouraged to check out books from the library.

Promoting Reading

Reading is the key to unlocking the curriculum and we are committed that children at St Joseph’s share a love of reading. Children who read for pleasure gain a richer vocabulary, more knowledge, critical thinking skills and become independent learners. As well as this, research also suggests that reading helps to improve the mental well-being of children. Put simply, children who read a lot tend to be happier! It has also been proven that children who are fluent readers tend to do better in their adult lives. Reading at St Joseph’s is promoted as an enjoyable and enriching experience to both children and parents via a wide range of activities:

• Daily Reading Pledge – we ensure that all pupils are read to everyday by our teaching staff. This time is highly valued and protected.

• Reading Buddy Bags – Every Friday, a super reader is chosen to take a reading buddy bag home. The children receive a hot chocolate and a book to enjoy with their reading buddy!
• Author visits– We regularly welcome visits from authors who talk to our children about their books and reading in general. This helps to promote the importance of reading and the pleasure that can be gained from reading.

• World Book Day – We are committed to supporting World Book Day every year and arrange a wide range of activities for our pupils to celebrate reading. This is heavily promoted around our school in many of our vibrant displays.
• High Quality Texts – we use high quality texts to deliver our English curriculum, We provide children with rich reading experiences within the English lessons and encourage them to appreciate the author’s use of language and writing techniques in order to develop their own writing skills
• Book Clubs – as part of our commitment to extra-curricular activities, we have  book clubs available to our pupils. This is an opportunity to share a high-quality text and to talk about it with their peers.

• Reading Corners – every classroom has a reading corner or ‘book nook’ to promote and value the importance of reading.
• Book Bus/Book Fairs – we regularly welcome the Scholastic’s Book Bus to school, so that parents and children can buy books which in turn raises funds for our school to help restock class and the school libraries.
• Library – We recently raised over £3000 to revamp our library. We now having a well-stocked beautiful space to enjoy reading. Our newly appointed librarians run a weekly book club and lending library.