At Norton Hill Primary, we believe that reading is the most important skill that we can teach our children. The ability to read, to decode text and understand what it says, allows children to access a whole new world of learning. Developing a child’s ability to read, not only enables them to access all other parts of the curriculum but embeds in them a love of books that will give them a life time of happiness.

“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Developing a life long love of reading is really important to us at Norton Hill Primary and as such we make sure that we give children time to read for pleasure each week as well as plan extra reading events to excite our children. Reading at our school goes beyond the classroom and we aim to continue to nurture and expand our reading culture within our school. Please take a look below to see how we prioritise reading at our school.

Developing a life long love of reading is really important to us at Norton Hill Primary and as such we make sure that we give children time to read for pleasure each week but that we also hold special events throughout the years such as Book Week and World Book Day.

• Within literacy sessions, the children at Norton Hill Primary read a range of specially selected books linked to their topics. They read these as a class. They also study the text as writers looking at ideas and structures that they can use within their writing along with lots of drama and creative work to bring the book alive and inspire them as writers.
• CROWD is the approach we use to teach reading across the school and include the following questions to assess children's understanding of a text; completition, recall, open-ended, 'wh' and distancing, . Our aim is to bring the books to life and provide additional experiences to enable to children to fully access the texts, develop their vocabulary and provide them with the knowledge and experiences required to infer meaning and deepen their understanding. More information about this approach can be found at www.booksmartfamily.com/crowd-strategy.html
• Cross-Curricular Reading is encouraged and children are given opportunities to do their own reading/research in their topic work allowing them to see the value of reading to learn and discover.
• Class Novels have been identified for each year group to ensure that during their time in school the children are able to enjoy a wide range of genres. There is a particular emphasis on the more classical texts as we want the children to hear books that they perhaps wouldn't normally choose themselves. Enjoying a class story is so important to us that it is timetabled in for every class in the school.
• Reading Challenges - To inspire and motivate a love of reading, we hold termly reading challenges for children to participate in. This is to show children the fun and enjoyment that reading can bring.
• World Book Day - Each year we celebrate National World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite character from a book. This is a day to celebrate and share our favourite books and our general love of reading.
• Book Fair - To promote the love of reading we give the children opportunities to buy their own books so that they can start to build their own collection of favourite books at home. We hold a book fair at least once a year (COVID dependent).
• Library - The Norton Hill Primary library is a lovely calm place in school where children can go to read a book and have story time with adults in a comfortable and exciting environment.

Last year we opened our very popular 'Starbooks Cafe' at Norton Hill Primary School. Starbooks Cafe provides families with a space to enjoy reading with their children whilst enjoying a hot beverage and a biscuit (or two!). We strive to foster a love of reading within our children and found that Starbooks sessions enabled families to be part of this. Starbooks is ran termly and offered to all year groups.

We often get requests from parents asking if they can bring sweets into school to celebrate their child’s birthday. As a healthy eating school our policy is that we do not support the sharing of sweets. However, we do recognise that birthdays are an important event in the lives of the children at our school, and they enjoy sharing their celebrations with their school friends. For those who would like to share something with their friends in school we are starting up a ‘Birthday Book’ corner in our school library.

If you wanted to celebrate your child’s birthday with their school friends, you could purchase a book for their classroom’s Birthday Book corner. The book you purchase can be enjoyed by your child and their classmates all year round. 

To help parents choose a suitable book, we have created a Birthday Book Wish List on Amazon. These wish lists will be available all year round and will be added to throughout the year, so there will always be something to choose from.  If you would like to take part, when it is getting close to your child’s birthday just click on the link to view the Wish List for your child’s class, and simply buy one book from the selection available. 

Once delivered, a book plate with your child’s name, birthday and age will be added to the front of the book. Your child will be presented with their book(s) in an assembly. The new books will be displayed in the library for a couple of weeks and then added to the shelves for pupils to read.

Please ensure that all book purchases are made via the Amazon online Wish List. This will ensure that we prevent too many duplicate titles, enabling us to buy popular book sets and requested publications etc.

There is no requirement to take part in the ‘Birthday Book’ initiative. Please be reassured that we will always celebrate and mark these important days in our children’s lives, whether a book is gifted or not.

Curiosity Corner Wish List

Reception Wish List