At St Peter's, we know how important it is for children to read and be read to.  If a child reads for 20 minutes a day they will be exposed to 1.8million words in one school year.  Reading also expands vocabulary and improves writing skills.  Reading to young children is proven to improve cognitive skills and help the process of cognitive development. When you begin reading aloud to your child, it essentially provides them with background knowledge on their young world, which helps them make sense of what they see, hear, and read.

Reading Rewards

To promote reading at home we are launching a new Reading Reward system at St Peter's.

In addition to regular reading at school, it is encouraged that your child should read at home at least four times every week. We would like you to read with and listen to your child read as much as possible to support them in the development of their reading skills.

We understand that home life can be very busy and that it can also be tricky when your child progresses through school as they might be reluctant to read out loud. However, we do encourage that you try to hear your child read out loud even if it is only for a page whilst you’re washing up, cooking etc. Fluency, expression and intonation are still skills an able reader needs to keep practising. And, it can be ‘fun’ reading to an audience!

To help us monitor and reward the children for working hard on their reading, please make sure the date and the text title is filled into the reading record. If you wish to comment in the diary you can; alternatively, you can initial after the text has been read. Children in Key Stage Two (Years 3-6) can complete the reading record themselves and are expected to write a comment about their book at least once a week.  The comment only needs to be a couple of sentences; it could be a prediction about what might happen next, a comment about a particular character or what they have enjoyed about the book so far, etc.  Any entries written by a child must be signed by an adult.  Your child’s class teacher will check the reading diaries weekly and count up their home reads. Class Teachers will keep a record of the number of reads each week.  If your child is not reading regularly at home, your child’s class teacher will contact you to see how they can support you with this.  

Please try to have your child’s reading books in school every day. This will enable us to record in the diary when your child has read with an adult in school or within a reading group. 

At the end of each half term we will congratulating the children who have achieved a ‘Reading Reward’ during our Friday achievement assembly. The children can gain Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum certificates.

Bronze - 25 reads, Silver - 50 reads, Gold - 100 reads,
Platinum - 250 reads!

Thank you for your continued support.

Miss Smith