At Willowdown Primary School, we are continuing our drive to encourage all children to read for pleasure. Research shows a positive link between reading frequency, enjoyment and educational attainment.  Furthermore, reading for pleasure has positive emotional and social benefits, improves text comprehension and grammar skills and increases general knowledge. 

All children are able to choose books to read in school and to take home for our school library and from class reading areas.  We set clear expectations for reading at home in each year group and Reading Records are monitored to track this.

Things we do at school:

We have many initiatives that are taking place in school over this academic year to further encourage reading for pleasure.

• Daily Drop Everything and Read
• Class books to support writing and our themes 
• School library 
• Whole school reading rewards - 'The Reading Rocket'

Things you can do at home:

• Ensure your child reads at least 4 times per week record their reading in their Reading Record
• Talk about what books they are currently reading
• Ask questions when listening to your child read aloud 
• Read books to your child / read books together
• Visit local libraries and bookshops

Stuck for what to read?

If your child is finding it difficult to know what they want to read, here are some ideas:

• Register on the  CLPE’s Core Books CLPE’s Core Books website for free to view regularly updated book lists sorted by age-range, genre, author or publisher.
• Visit Accelerated Reader Bookfinder which is an easy to use, free online tool which allows you or your child to search for books by interest-level and topic.  You can also find collections lists of the most popular books that children are reading at the moment.
• Go to a bookshop or a library and immerse yourselves in some of the great texts out there.

We greatly appreciate all the support you give in supporting and encouraging your children to read at home and we are looking forward to an exciting year full of reading ahead!