“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” ― Dr. Seuss

Reading here at Berkeley Primary School

At Berkeley Primary School, we believe reading is the key to effective learning and one of the most important things children will achieve in our school. Everything else they do in school depends on it. Children learn how to appreciate books, to read independently and to take immense pleasure in reading. We teach children that reading is an essential life skill, we want the love of reading to remain with our children for life.

We want our children to develop a love of books and have access to high-quality literature that will not only support their learning across the curriculum but also extend beyond the classroom environment and enrich their lives.

We aspire to support our children to become culturally and language rich; to experience, learn and be able to use knowledge and have an extensive vocabulary. We aim to achieve this by reading ambitiously and widely. Fluent readers can access a full range of life experiences and can enjoy an amazing breadth of genres and writers.

'A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.' - Neil Gaiman

Reading for Enrichment and Enjoyment

"The National Curriculum requires teachers to encourage pupils to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information. It also emphasises the importance of listening to, discussing, and reading for themselves a wide range of stories, poems, plays and non-fiction books." The National Curriculum.

We love to talk about reading. By having quality books and a wide range of choice, we entice our children to read. We prioritise reading within our budget, every year we allocate money to top up books across the school and take much joy in purchasing some of the many new books that are published. We have recently invested in curriculum themed books to support their learning in all subjects.

We feel that it is important that children have a wide variety of text types that provide sufficient challenge and are ambitious for the children. We ensure our books vary in length, complexity and genre. We have fiction, non-fiction, poems, comics, newspapers, plays and audio resources. We have books that are classics that teachers enjoyed when they were young, we have books from different cultures, books that reflect our wide society (race, religion and disability), books with current issues like refugees and eco-awareness and we have books written in different languages.

Please click on the link below which explains in more details how we teach reading at Berkeley Primary School. 

Book Club Feedback

Some lovely feedback from a parent during our consultation evening. We think Book Club works brilliantly and we are really pleased that others think the same thing.