Reading for Pleasure

Here at St James, reading for pleasure is at the heart of what we do! We know the importance of fostering a love of reading in our children and our staff. Reading is all around us and we are determined to be successful in our endeavour to make all children passionate readers. 

Reading Awards at St James

Reading at home is a fantastic way to share and enjoy books together, to practice phonics and Fred Talk and to help your child read with fluency and confidence. Children working beyond RWI phonics will also practice applying reading skills learnt in their guided reading lessons. Recording this extra practice in your Reading Records helps the teachers to know what additional practice your child is getting and how they can best support your child in progressing in their reading and phonics. Any book read by the child counts. An adult, older sibling, or the child themselves can make a note of when reading has happened in their Reading Record, and this should be recorded each time.

Reading Record books will be looked at every Thursday by your class teacher and rewards will be given as follows:

- When a child reads 25 times, they move up a coloured book band on the Class Rainbow

- When a child reaches a new band, they were be sent a certificate which can be printed at home. 

- Once all seven rainbow colours have been achieved (200 reads in total!) the child will be a reading champion!

Whole School Reading:

When class teachers look at Reading Records, they also keep a note of the amounts of reads complete by the class. In our Celebration Assembly, the class with the most reads will receive a Golden Book trophy for their class! Here are the winners for our first week!

At the end of each term, the class that has read the most gets to choose one of our Golden Books from the box! The children add them to their class book corners to enjoy during the day! 

Our Library

This starts from when you walk into our school and visit our library. It is stocked with a huge range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry books for all ages. We welcome parents and their children into our library every Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30-8:40 and 3:20-3:30. During this time you can choose a book to take home and bring it back whenever suits you. 

You can even take a look at what staff at St James recommend for you! 

If you miss one of the before or after school slots, don't worry! The library is also open during playtimes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our eager librarians will be there to show you around and help you choose a book that interests you!

Topic Corner
 

In the Spring Term, we introduced a 'Topic Corner' to our library to expose children to key days and events that happen throughout the year. We have loved exploring World Religion Day, Chinese New Year, LGBT History Month and World Book Day so far! 

Our Librarians

Reading in Our Classrooms

This journey of reading continues into our classrooms where we enjoy spending time together to read with others or on our own. Here a few pictures of book corners around our school! 

Even the teachers love reading too! Take a look on our doors to see what we've been reading...

Virtual Library

To promote our love of reading at St James we have created our very own Virtual Library! We'd love for you to use this to promote your love of reading at home too -  simply click on the book cover picture to enjoy a story! 

World Book Day!

On Thursday 3rd March, we joined with many other primary schools across the country to celebrate World Book Day. We chose to explore the Earth's 4 elements through story and poetry. These stories and poems were written by people from across the Commonwealth which allowed us to discover more about different people, countries and cultures too! We couldn't forget about getting creative too! Caterpillars and Butterflies came as Earth, Hedgehogs as Water, Foxes ad Fire and Woodpeckers as Air. A great day was enjoyed by all!