FOCUS ON GRANTS FOR LITERACY
one of the most effective ways to leverage social change.’ We aim not only to have every child leaving primary school able to read, but also to create lifelong readers. We have a well-established
Reading Working Party which includes both teachers and teaching assistants from across the key stages. Meetings allow for good practice and strategies to be shared throughout the school and for reading events to be planned thoroughly and effectively. RfP events are continual throughout the year. Due to our children’s minimal life experiences, CPD allows staff to carefully choose texts that introduce children to ideas and worlds outside of their everyday lives, increasing their cultural capital and improving their vocabulary and love of reading.
‘We’ve received hundreds of free books’
M
any of the children at our Middlesbrough primary school come from homes where there are no books
and no culture of reading. So for the past five years we’ve worked with the National Literacy Trust to promote Reading for Pleasure (RfP) as a way of building cultural capital. Most schools know how difficult it is to secure funding for reading books. Since we are in an area of high deprivation – with 60% of our children receiving Free School Meals – the charity’s help with providing books has had a huge impact. Our pupils have also benefited from its many reading- related events and activities.
20 AUTUMN 2023 FundEd
Our approach Together with the National Literacy Trust, we’ve developed a bespoke strategy to make Reading for Pleasure an agent for social change. It is consistently prioritised in our School Development Plan and we currently have a member of SLT whose teaching and learning responsibility is to promote RfP throughout the school, involving all stakeholders. Our mission statement says that RfP is central to the ethos of our school as we know from research by the OECD (2002) that: ‘Being a frequent reader is more of an advantage than having well educated parents. Finding ways to engage students in reading may be
Help with reading and books In the last few years, our pupils have received free books through various initiatives run by the National Literacy Trust in Middlesbrough, enabling us to create a buzz around reading and to build up a really good school library of more than 500 titles. Our Year 5 pupils take part in the Young Readers Programme, which includes two exciting in-house events, a trip
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