Reading for Pleasure at Alexander First School

At Alexander First School, we believe that children deserve a rich curriculum, which encourages extensive reading of different genres and authors.

We believe that active encouragement of reading for pleasure is a core part of every child’s educational entitlement, whatever their background or attainment because we know that extensive reading and exposure to a wide range of quality texts make a huge contribution to our pupils’ educational achievement.

At Alexander First, we aim to promote the concepts of reading for ‘fun’, ‘enjoyment’ and ‘pleasure’.  We ensure that we include a range of books within the curriculum as well as the opportunity for sustained reading from a range of other self-chosen fiction and non-fiction texts from our school library and classroom reading areas.  We use our classroom reading areas to promote our favourite texts as well as to encourage children to continue reading texts to support our curriculum.

We believe that all adults who are part of the Alexander First School community should be ‘reading role models’ and we ensure that adults share their favourite texts with the children regularly.  We ensure that there is an opportunity for professional development for teachers to explore the huge range of printed and electronic reading materials to enable them to support children in their reading choices and develop a rich curriculum.

We ensure that reading is always high on the agenda and the school Reading Ambassadors help to promote this within school. They are a dedicated team of children from KS2 who want to pass on their own love of reading to their peers and younger children in the school.

At Alexander First School, we promote the engagement of Reading for Pleasure through many strategies and initiatives that help to create our inspirational reading culture. Examples are included below:

Reading Ambassadors- Our children thrive on their leadership roles in school, none less than our Reading Ambassadors. These children promote reading for pleasure through the use of:

• Assemblies
• In school projects that encourage children to read regularly and widely
• Supporting the celebration of children who achieve ‘5 Reads’ and other in school competitions
• Supporting the Mrs Corcoran to audit and order books for the reading scheme, library and classroom reading areas.

5 Reads- Children in school are challenged to read five times per week. This system has been running in school for over several years and is well embedded into school life. This culture within school ensures children develop good reading habits of reading little and often.

The children are rewarded with weekly certificates and entered into a prize draw to win Amazon vouchers at the end of the year.

Library- children have the opportunity to visit the school library on a weekly basis and to choose a book of their choice.

Mystery Reader- parents visit school, unbeknown to their child, and read a story to their child’s class. The children enjoy having many different adults reading to them.

Book Club- There is a school book club that involves children having a copy of a book chosen by themselves. They are asked to read a set amount between meetings. The purpose of our book club is to expose children to exceptional literature, to promote the necessary skills for group discussion and to share ideas, explore differences of opinion and find common interests.

Small group reading interventions and whole class story time- Once we are post-Covid we will also return to lunch time reading buddies and other cross-school reading opportunities.

Reading for Pleasure (Twenty-five reads)- At Alexander First School, to encourage children to read widely. Each class has a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ booklet of twenty-five texts that they are encouraged to read whilst in their current class. The children review the books they have read and recommend them to others within their class.

By the time a child leaves Alexander First School, they could have potentially read 150 books!

Alexander First Book Week- Children at Alexander First School take part in a whole week of reading activities during Book Week including: book swap, parent reading sessions, extreme reading, whole school read-athon, writing competition using books as models for writing to name a few.

The activities promote positive reading habits and provide a platform for children to foster their love of reading.

Reading Buddies- Children in Year 4 pair up with a younger child in either Y2, Y1 or Reception and support them with their reading. This allows the older child to be a positive role model for the younger child; to help model good reading; increase each other’s’ self-esteem and to develop a love of reading.