Primary Times - the definitive what’s on and where to go family guide of activities and events for children of primary school age. Things to do with your kids during the school holidays including arts and craft activities, music and theatre for children, parties, competitions, days out, and family attractions along with term time drama schools, dance classes, after school clubs and sports activities. Things to do at a place near you!
Developing the Love of Reading at Iver Village Junior School
The excitement a child gets when they start to read is magical and opens a whole new world for them. As adults it is our responsibility to keep that magic alive and support all our pupils in developing a life-long love for reading! As a result, reading is a priority within our school and we aim to show to our children all the fun you can have with reading!!
We began our journey to revolutionise reading across the school in September 2017, with the aim of creating a culture in our school in which reading is discussed, celebrated and enjoyed by all! Towards the end of last school year we were lucky enough to get a large grant from the Foyle Foundation to help restock our library. Some of our children helped select our new books and we formed a Reading Council to help make future decisions about books and the library in general.
One of the first ideas we had to show children the excitement of reading was through developing our teaching and encouraging teachers to use high quality children’s books to inspire children’s writing as well as creating a community of readers in which a core text is discussed and enjoyed as a class.
In the Autumn term, we decided we needed some furry friends to help us to inspire reading within our school! Our first reading dog, Dudley, joined our team in October and we started to have “Woof Wednesdays” where children would have the opportunity to read their favourite book to Dudley! Dudley has been a great support in listening to stories read by some of our more reluctant readers ever since! Due to the success of having Dudley in we got 2 full time reading dogs who have been a huge success. Their breed is a cross between Maltese and Lhasa Apso which makes them very good as therapy dogs, due to their calm and child friendly temperament as well as their hypoallergenic fur. The dogs love being at IVJS and have formed a special bond with the children and quite a few of the parents too! They enjoy hearing children read in the library and children have become very keen to read to them. They also love cuddles and like to comfort people when they are feeling sad.
As well as inspiring reading within our school environment, we wanted to inspire children to share their love for reading at home. As staff, when we thought back to our favourite memories of reading we remembered family time and sharing books with our siblings and parents. This is something that we wanted our children to experience also. As a result, we launched our “Reading Rocks” events where parents and children can read together in our school library. These events have proved very popular with many family members attending and being excellent reading role models for the children. At the end of the Autumn term we took this approach a step further with our “PJ and hot chocolate evening” in which we opened our school up to families to come and share bed time stories with a special treat! This proved a real success and saw families really enjoying reading together.
Due to their success we continued our “Reading Rocks” events termly but we still wanted to keep the excitement for reading alive throughout the school and at all times of the school day! With the help of our reading council, we set up an outdoor reading area for children to comfortably read and share books during their playtimes. This has been a great success and teachers love being able to talk to children about their reading even during play time! Additionally, in the Summer term we held a Harry Potter evening for parents and children. This was a way for us to show the true magic behind stories as we transformed our school into a wizarding world! Our sorting hat used fairy cakes to help sort everyone into houses as they arrived throughout the evening, children and parents took part in Harry Potter themed activities including wand making using magical unicorn hair, mixing a variety of potions and brewing up butterbeer! Towards the end of the evening a brilliant game of Quidditch was held with children flying around on their broomsticks (hockey sticks in disguise!). This evening really highlighted the excitement that can be had with reading with just a little bit of imagination!
As you can see, reading is very important to children and staff at Iver Village Junior School and we hope to continue our journey in keeping the magic of reading alive for children, parents and staff!
