Reading at St Paul's

At St Paul's we love to read! Here are some of our reading activities:

The children in Reception to Year 2 at St Paul's take part in weekly guided reading sessions as part of their class based reading experiences. They read in small, focused groups with their teachers and Teaching Assistants. They read a variety of books and texts linked to their class Learning Challenges and also to other general areas of interest.

Comprehension lessons take place regularly, when the children are given opportunities to learn further specific reading skills and put them to practise.

Additionally, all our classes love to 'Drop Everything and Read' and the adults as well as the children in school bring in their favourite books to read to themselves.

Our teachers also read aloud class texts, sharing longer stories to fire the children's imagination.

Lots of our school family are taking part in our 'Extreme Reading' incentive and their photographs take pride of place on display for everyone to see. If you like to read in strange or unusual places, bring in a photo to share with us. You might even win a prize!

Each year we enjoy celebrating World Book Day and our adults and children dress up and participate in a variety of fun reading activities.

Library

We have now re-sited our library into a cosy, tranquil room next to the staff room. 

Recently we subscribed to 'The Reading Cloud' which has enabled us to store all our library details electronically. 

All the children in school will soon be able to create their own electronic reading profile where they can re-search, blog and chat about books and reading. Our Year 6 librarians are currently in the process of training all our teachers to create their own profiles on the Reading Cloud.  Soon all our children will be able to log the books they borrow and access the Reading Cloud from home or school. 

Reading at Home

We think it is extremely important that children read regularly to be able to practise the skills they are taught in school.  In addition to school based reading opportunities, all children are given 'take home' reading books which are changed regularly.  Parents are asked to sign/comment in their child's personal reading planner which is a useful source of interaction between home and school.

Our main reading scheme 'The Oxford Reading Tree' is a favourite of many of our children. We use many branches of the scheme, including Fireflies and Tree Tops. This main scheme is supplemented by Rigby Rockets, Fast Lane, Ginn Pocket Books and Rising Stars Reading Planet. This mixture of books ensures that the children experience a variety of genres, font styles and images.  We have recently made some new additions to our decode-able books to ensure that children's phonic skills can be practised and applied during home reading in a fun and varied way. These new resources include Big Cat Phonics.

There are lots of reading challenges going on in class which all the children take part in.  Ask your child's teacher for more information and find out about the rewards available.