At Spalding St Paul’s Primary School, reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are a school which promotes reading in all areas of the curriculum and we are passionate about every single child having access to high quality texts which promote protective characteristics.
As a school, we wish to encourage a lifelong love of reading and a genuine passion of Reading for Pleasure amongst the children in our school community. We believe that reading should be at the heart of the curriculum not only to support the children’s academic development but also their understanding, empathy and knowledge of the world around them.
Reading Ambassadors
At Spalding St Paul’s Primary School, we have 15 fabulous Reading Ambassadors. Their role within school is to be a good reading role model, encourage other children to read and promote a love of reading around school. There are two children from Key Stage 1 classes who have volunteered to take on this important job due to their own love of reading.
The Reading Ambassadors help with all jobs that are reading related in school. They look after the reading corners and library, suggest new books that they would like to see in school and promote reading for pleasure not only in their own class but throughout the whole school community. Reading Ambassadors share their love of reading by reading with other children or recommending books that they have already read.
Our Reading Ambassadors have made local links to our community. We have visited our local bookshop and help Mrs Wright to buy new and exciting books for the library. We have also made links with our local library and spent some time helping library staff and learning how to scan books in and out, catalogue books on the shelves and learn how libraries work.
Our Reading Ambassadors play a vital role in making reading the heart of our school and our curriculum.
Children as readers
Each class teacher has a great understanding of every child as a reader. Through such activities as Buddy readers, virtual author visits and special days such as World Book Day and National Poetry Day, teachers gain a wealth of knowledge of what books each child values as their Reading for Pleasure books. This then helps teachers to recommend books to the children as well as help them select class books that they know will be loved by their class. Our Reading Ambassadors help to select and choose books that they know their classmates will enjoy. They also help to look after the reading areas and organise our special reading events.
Reading Environments
In school, we have high quality reading environments where children can sit to share a book with a friend or even with one of our Reading Buddies! ‘Our spotlight on…’ displays are always eagerly anticipated by the children, and they can select books to read in their classroom or at home. We also have a beautiful range of books which promote protected characteristics. The children love to select a book for their teacher to read to the class or to share with a friend.
At Spalding St Paul’s Primary School, we aim to build a culture and social reading spaces that create, develop and nurture a RfP pedagogy for our children.
We aim to:
• Ensure that children have a wide range of high-quality books; fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics and magazines to choose from.
• Ensure that every child is regularly read to.
• Ensure that, as a staff, we are passionate and knowledgeable about children’s literature and have a good knowledge of the children’s reading practices.
• Further develop reading communities within our school between staff, children and their families.
Reading for pleasure in the community
Not only are we passionate about Reading for Pleasure within school but we spread our love of reading into the community. We have introduced Mystery Readers with our Reception class, with parents coming in to read to the children each week. We also run reading Café’s where families have come in to read with their children. Our Pre-school and Reception classes have had grandparents in for reading sessions to share wonderful discussions about the stories.
We have strong links with the Spalding Community Library. Each class visits the library throughout the year, and we have established Summer and Winter reading challenges in conjunction with the library. We also have taken a ‘Booknic’ to Glenhome (a retirement housing complex) where the children read to the residents. Through the hard work, dedication and passion of our team we were award the Lincolnshire Reading Pledge Bronze Award in the summer term of 2024.
Parents and carers
at home
play a vital role
in promoting
reading for pleasure
If parents and carers can encourage their child to read for pleasure, they will really reap the benefits. It might not seem like a particularly important task, but research shows that reading for pleasure can be directly linked to children’s success throughout their time at school and even into adulthood.
Reading for pleasure opens new worlds for children. It gives them the opportunity to use their imagination to explore new ideas, visit new places and meet new characters. Interestingly, reading for pleasure also improves children’s well-being and empathy. It helps them to understand their own identity and gives them an insight into the world and the views of others.
We are always keen to share and talk about good books! Click the button for more information.
