Reading At Hendal Primary School

Through the teaching of Early Reading and Phonics we will nurture a love of Reading in all our children.

Through the rigorous teaching of our synthetic systematic phonic programme “Floppy’s Phonics” we will achieve success in making every child a reader.

Children will rapidly acquire new vocabulary and develop their use and understanding of spoken language by being provided with a variety of speaking and listening opportunities to raise standards in English, Mathematics and the wider curriculum.

Children will learn to speak clearly and confidently and they will transfer their vocabulary across our curriculum with ease.

Children will experience strong links with reading across the curriculum and understand the importance of reading as a transferable skill for future education and employment

At Hendal Primary school there is a strong reading culture that enthuses and engages children with high quality literature and texts that become secure childhood memories that can be cherished into adulthood.

We will raise the aspirations of children and parents about what children can achieve in Early reading.

Books and stories are carefully planned into the curriculum. We ensure a wide variety of high quality texts are used to represent our diverse world.

Every Monday we start the week with ‘Book Club’ from Nursery to Year 6. This is an opportunity to share texts, stories and novels at the very start of the week to encourage and develop a love of learning and for children and adults to talk about their favourite stories.

We have had training from the Jerry Clay English HUB and children in Nursery, Reception and Year 1 have a story each day following the programme ‘Magic of Story’. This approach follows a reading routine that develops children’s recital and story telling and language.

Across school we have texts that are identified as challenging and aspirational for each year group that are ‘Pie Corbett Texts’. These are there to encourage children to have exposure to ambitious vocabulary and to enrich their knowledge and language skills.

Libraries in classroom are carefully planned for, we have baskets that are filled with books beyond the texts we know children can access at home or in local supermarkets. We want children to have the exposure and the experience of handling and reading texts that are of the highest quality.

Libraries in school are used from EYFS, KS1 and KS2. We are fortunate to have texts that are exciting and stimulating for a wide range of interests and for our vivid readers.

Opportunities to read in breakfast club, break time and lunch are encouraged.

WORLD BOOK DAY – 2024

This year the Reading Ambassadors asked pupils what World Book Day activities they had enjoyed in previous years.  One of the most popular was Reading Buddies, where children form different year groups share books together.  We have some fantastic reading role models in our school.

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Book Cover Competition

The Reading Ambassadors did an assembly to launch a Book Cover Competition where pupils had to redesign a book cover and add a three words to describe the book.  It was very popular and we had lots of entries.  The certificates were also made by the children.  Look out for the winning entries in the library.

WORLD BOOK DAY – 2020

“Reading for Pleasure is the single-biggest indicator of a child’s future success, more than their family circumstances, parents’ educational background or their income.” – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

At Hendal Primary we shall be celebrating our Love of Reading through a variety of activities throughout the day on THURSDAY 5TH MARCH.

Reading Areas

In every class room there is an exciting reading area for children. Teachers have worked hard to create exciting themes to promote a love of reading. Each reading area has a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction books that link to your child’s topic but also to meet the interest of the class. Please do come in and visit your child’s reading area. Here are a few of the reading areas in school.

School Libraries

Reading is a focus of the school and we encourage children to read, read, read! We are lucky enough to have two beautiful, well resourced libraries where all children across school can borrow books from to take home.

Our new EYFS library was opened by the famous Author Hilary Robinson in memory of our special colleague Mrs Woodcock, children will be able to enjoy stories together and with their families for many years to come. Please encourage your child to use our libraries and make time to share their books at home.

Foundation – Our ‘Mrs Woodcock’ library is open Fridays at 2.45 for children to swap and read books with an adult.

Year 1 – The Year 1 library is open to swap and borrow books every Friday Morning from dropping off. Please stay and share books with your child, you are welcome to stay in your child’s classroom/library from 8.50-9.10am.

Year 2- 6 – The library in KS2 is open to swap and borrow books for each class during the week. Every class has an allocated slot, however children are able to access the library to change their books during the day.

Book Swap

Each term we have a school book swap. This is an opportunity for children to bring in their favourite stories and share them with their friends and then take home a new book to read at home. Please encourage your child to take part as it is an easy and fun way for children to be exposed to other exciting books that they might not already have.

Year 6 Reading Buddies

Our year 6 children enjoy the responsibility of reading and sharing stories with other children in school. This is a good opportunity for all children to enjoy reading together for enjoyment.

Pyjamarama Day

Children had a very exciting day packed full with reading activities and stories. Children came to school in their comfortable Pyjamas and brought in their favourite story books. Children had class swap over in the afternoon and had a guest reader from another teacher at the end of the day. A wonderful day was had by all!

Extreme Reading Competition

Well done to all of the children who took part in our Extreme Reading competition. Miss Wild will be leading an assembly this month to encourage children to take more photographs of ‘Extreme Reading’ and will reward the three top winners with a voucher for WHSmith. Good luck everyone! Please continue to send in photographs of your child reading in extreme places.

Scholastic Book Fair

Please look out on the newsletter for the next visit from the Scholastic Book club. This is an opportunity to purchase new stories to share at home. At the Christmas Fair over 100 children purchased a new book to share at home. This has raised over £600 for school to spend on new books to add to our wonderful libraries. Thank you for your support.