At Godmanchester Community Academy, we adamantly believe that being literate changes your life. Furthermore, if you are a literate child who reads for pleasure then this has more impact on your future life chances than any other factor.
We do not just recommend reading for pleasure, we have worked hard to create a reading culture which immerses all of our pupils in literature that they can’t help but enjoy.
The school has reading at its forefront and are always doing well in emphasising how great reading is and how it will help children throughout childhood, teen years and into adulthood. I cannot fault anything regards to the school’s initiation of a love for reading.
Parent Survey, September 2022
Central to this culture are the core texts embedded within our curriculum. These high quality books help our pupils to engage with their learning and experiences at a deeper level by opening their minds to different characters, cultures and periods of history.
In addition to our core texts are our class reads. These books engage and inspire our pupils. They offer our pupils the opportunity to see themselves represented and importantly, they provide our pupils with a window into the lives and experiences of others. They are read to and by our pupils on a daily basis and allow all of our pupils to experience and enjoy stories they might not otherwise meet. Dedicated time is set aside for sharing class reads in every year group. We believe that by reading well-chosen books aloud, teachers help their classes to become communities of readers. Individuals who can share in experiences of a wide repertoire of books they enjoy.
The focus on reading is excellent and I appreciate seeing that staff have regularly read with my son to see how he’s doing.
Parent Survey, September 2022
Books and information about books are displayed attractively throughout our school so that whether a pupil be browsing, choosing or reading a book they feel well guided in their text selection and enthused by the future reads available to them.
To inspire reading in our pupils, we also:
- Invest heavily in reading resources that children want to read and re-read including books, poetry and comics.
- Have members of staff who are excellent reading role models. They lead by example, creating an environment that promotes reading as a socially engaging activity that is highly valued.
- Utilise our older pupils as reading role models to our youngest learners by having regular reading together slots.
- Promote books that we believe our pupils and their families will enjoy.
- Make use of displays, competitions and incentives including the ‘millionaires club’.
- Welcome reading volunteers to provide children with more opportunities to share a book with an adult.
- Encourage parents and carers to spend time reading with their child.
On days such as World Book Day we set aside the timetable and really celebrate books. We encourage our pupils and staff to dress up as their favourite characters. We share our favourite books and introduce our peers to our favourite authors. Most importantly, we spend time reading and discussing books with no interruptions!
Such events give our pupils a real reason for understanding characters, expressing preferences, talking about books they have enjoyed and hearing about books from their peers.
Our reading culture enables all of our pupils to see the power of a shared love of reading.
We encourage our pupils to access the Accelerated Reader system at home to complete quizzes. Please click here to access the site.
Reading is vital and underpins a child’s learning and experiences. It should be enjoyed and loved and all children should look forward to reading new, intriguing and exciting books.
To support our pupils in their book selections we encourage staff to make recommendations based on their own reading and knowledge. Added to this we share award-winning fiction, non-fiction and poetry books with our pupil’s regularly and ensure that there are copies in the school for their enjoyment. Our pupils are also encouraged to recommend books to one and other. This happens in class discussions, assemblies and through read together times.
In addition to these recommendations we have complied a selection of the top recommendations for each year group. These lists provide recommendations for fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and we have worked hard to ensure that a range of authors, genders, cultures and themes are represented.
Each list contains high quality books with great vocabulary, insightful details and fascinating facts. These are wonderful books for children to enjoy either by themselves, in groups or with adults.
In order to ensure that our selection contains new releases we review and update these lists regularly.
We also encourage our pupils, parents and carers to explore the following websites for further recommendations or book information:
Centre for Literacy in Primary Education Recommendations
Love Reading 4 Kids Recommendations
In addition to the websites above, we have also worked in conjunction with our local independent bookshop Niche Comics to curate a list of recommended books that we believe our children would enjoy. To visit the GCA page on Niche’s website click here.
Book Trust recommendations for 0-5 year olds
Book Trust recommendations for 6-8 year olds
Lower KS2 100 recommended reads
Upper KS2 100 recommended reads
At GCA we understand the importance of children being read to, and, we prioritise time each day for this. Each day at 3 O’clock, children at GCA are read to by their teacher. Each year group has a core selection of texts which includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Our staff may also select additional books which they feel their classes would enjoy.
In the future we hope to be able to invite visitors from the community to come in and share their favourite stories and books with the children too. Watch this space!
Our aim is that every child and adult in our school loves to read.
Whilst children already have access to a wide variety of text types and authors through the book choices available in school, we are incredibly proud of our latest initiative, GCA Reads Together. Since it’s introduction in Summer Term 2022, GCA Reads Together has become known by our children, families and staff as the’Friday Books’.
The idea behind ‘Friday Books’ is that each week our children and their families are given the opportunity to select books to take home and enjoy together. These books have been selected because we believe they represent some of the best books available. The Friday Book lists contain a mixture of classic, picture books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, award-winning authors and illustrators, books linked to our school curriculum and books that are quite simply, and without a doubt, great reads!
This initiative was launched with EYFS in April 2022 and Year 1 and 2 in May 2022. Friday books as they have become known will launch in Year 3 during Autumn Term 2022.
We also offer our children the opportunity to enjoy the latest and greatest ‘must-reads’. This is a collection of nominated and award-winning books from a variety of book awards and prizes. This collection contains yet more high quality, exciting and engaging books. Children are freely able to borrow from this bank and are also encouraged to share their views on these books and make recommendations to their peers.
Since September 2021, we have invited elected children into school from 8.30am every morning to attend our morning reading club.
The club is led by a team of experienced staff including teachers and teaching assistants and is aimed at improving word recognition and language comprehension. A variety of activities and interventions take place within the club including phonics groups (Sounds Write), comprehension activities (SRA reading comprehension), vocabulary building and 1:1 reading. In addition to these, children are engaged in conversation about story structures and books.
The club is currently invitation only with priority for spaces being given to pupils working below the expected standard in reading and phonics and those eligible for pupil premium funding.
Since its introduction, the club has had a positive impact on our pupils’ reading progress and confidence.
The driving force behind our reading curriculum is equality of opportunity. Across Key Stage Two, we teach reading through whole class sessions.
Research clearly demonstrates a strong correlation between success at reading and having better prospects in adulthood. It is therefore imperative that we ensure all of our pupils have the opportunity to become successful readers.
We do this by ensuring that our reading curriculum prioritises language comprehension through vocabulary acquisition, discussion and debate. We provide every pupil with the opportunity to develop a board vocabulary base by carefully selecting challenging class texts focused on a variety of subjects and written by a wide range of authors. Below is the KS2 text map for Whole Class Reading which outlines the text covered in each year group.
We then expose every pupil in each class to the same text, differentiating through the use of scaffolds. We have the highest expectation of all pupils.
We value the principles of oracy, debate, discussion and enrichment. Our teachers model how to challenge knowledge, apply knowledge and find meaning within texts. This high quality modelling is combined with discussion and questioning to enable all of our pupils to understand the texts they read.