Reading

Reading at Burrough Green
Reading is a vital skill which widens opportunity, deepens thinking, feeds the imagination and informs and entertains in equal measure. We want all our children to be able to read for pleasure as well as for purpose, becoming confident and fluent readers. Throughout the school we have a strong focus on the development of vocabulary and language acquisition that supports reading and writing in all subjects. 
From the very earliest stages children should be encountering books every day and hearing stories read to them. The role of the parent, therefore, is paramount in helping to create these conditions. We hope the guidance we provide here will give you a better idea of the place of reading in developing young minds, what we do at school and approaches you can try at home.
Children absorb much from the environment around them, so making this environment reading-friendly is our aim. Books should be freely available and children should be able to choose which books to read. Reading should be a talkative, social experience, as well as a quiet, reflective, personal one. Different types of books should be within their grasp, so they can learn to follow and develop interests, as well as encounter something that is novel. Children need to share books with adults who model good reading behaviours: such as how to handle books with care; how to make choices; how to hold the book and turn the pages; how to bring the content alive through the way they use their voice and gesture, and how they draw the child into the experience through thoughtful prompts and questions.
From the very start we are preparing our children to be readers through their acquisition of spoken language. If the language used in the home is rich and varied, this will be beneficial. Therefore at school we use work, play, songs, rhymes, pictures and music to introduce new vocabulary and language structures that will expand the children’s minds. Indeed learning the patterns of familiar rhymes off by heart will help them to recognise other patterns in songs, and later in spelling.
 
 
Reading Spine
We want our school to be a place where children are read to, enjoy, discuss and work with high quality books. These ‘essential reads’ will create a living library inside a child’s mind. This is the ‘Reading Spine’. We have provided the Pie Corbett reading spine in our classrooms so that children have access to these high quality texts. 

Our Reading Spine is a collection of contemporary and classic children’s books selected for the quality of their writing, illustration and ability to represent the lives and experiences of all of our children at Burrough Green Primary School regardless of their gender, ethnicity or social class. The spine books have been written by a diverse group of authors in a wide range of genres and contexts, and have been chosen to promote diversity and broaden the horizons of Burrough Green children to the world outside Cambridgeshire. 

The books in our reading spine offer children (and teachers) the opportunity to read, share and talk about books which support a holistic approach to reading. They help children understand the world around them, to process emotions and experiences.

Pie Corbett says:

“Great books build the imagination. The more we read aloud expressively, and the more children are able to savour, discuss and reinterpret literature through the arts, the more memorable the characters, places and events become, building an inner world. A child who is read to will have an inner kingdom of unicorns, talking spiders and a knife that cuts into other worlds. The mind is like a ‘tardis’; it may seem small but inside there are many mansions. Each great book develops the imagination and equips the reader with language.”

 Please see below for a list of spine books that will be read this year in each class.