Reading at St. George's School
At St George’s school we are passionate about reading. We teach reading daily and provide children with opportunities to read across the curriculum. Books have been carefully selected to help develop children’s skills as a reader but also develop a passion and enthusiasm for reading. There is a broad range of subject matter and genres.
Books are selected to match our curriculum learning, supporting children in developing their understanding and key vocabulary. In addition, we work hard to ensure that our children see themselves represented in reading and have access to a wide range of diverse texts.
Libraries
At both our Towers and Woodlands sites, we are lucky to have beautiful, well-resourced libraries to inspire our young readers. The libraries contain a fantastic mixture of classic stories and new releases. We have a number of Year 6 Librarians to help source and run the library with a member of staff.
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World Book Day 2025
This year St. George's celebrated World Book Day in style!
We invited children and staff to dress up as a book character or in some PJ's to get cosy with a book. The costumes were fantastic and everybody looked AMAZING!
The children spent the morning touring different classes and getting to know different books. As they visited each class they gained a stamp/sticker in their World Book Day passport.
We're going on a door hunt!
As part of our World Book Day celebrations children, parents and carers were invited into school to go on a Door hunt!
30 doors around the school were decorated, inspired by different books. Can you guess them all?!
Reading at home
Woodlands
At Woodlands, children receive a reading card. We encourage children to read 5 times a week at home. This can be done with an adult, to a friend or independently. Children or adults then simply tick their reading card. Children who read 5 times receive a special reading sticker!
Woodlands children take 2 reading books home a week. One ‘child’s choice’ book for developing pleasure for reading and one phonics or fluency book, for developing the children’s reading fluency.
Towers
At Towers, children are also encouraged to read 5 times a week. Children receive reading records where parents and pupils can comment on the book they are reading. All children can choose a ‘child’s choice’ book every week to read at home and school.
Chrildren who require Phonics are given a weekly Phonics book to read and those who are still working on their fluency are given a fluency reading book between Fluency level 1 and Fluency level 10.
Phonics
At St George's School we use Little Wandle as our chosen phonics framework. Whole class phonics is taught in EYFS and Key Stage 1. It may be used as an intervention in Key Stage 2 for children who need it. This programme provides a clear framework of progression beginning with simple phoneme identification, blending and segmenting to developing fluency in independent reading. The programme is supported with resources such as reading books, that are fully decodable and are sent home to support reading practice. These are also used within school.
Check out our phonics page for more information: https://www.stgeorgesschool.org/essex/primary/stgeorgesjunior/staging/pages/learning2021-2022/phonics?designMode=true (alternatively it can be found in the Curriculum tab).
The Little Wandle website has a whole host of wonderful videos to support parents with Phonics at home.
Check out the link:
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Reading for pleasure
We are passionate about providing children with opportunities for reading for pleasure. Every Friday, children have ‘Drop Everything And Read’ where they can free read any text of their choosing in class, either individually or with a friend. Alongside this we also celebrate World Book Day, host travelling book fairs and run a number of reading clubs.
Reading Scrapbooks
Every class at St. George's School has a reading scrapbook. The children volunteer to take the scrapbook home and create a book review/recommendation for a book that they have recently read. These are then shared within the class and across the Key Stage to encourage others to read the same book. Take a look at some our the children's entries below.
Author Visit- 2024
Author Visit - James Campbell
Here at St. George's we were lucky enough to have a visit from author and comedian James Campbell. James visit all classes from Reception to Year 6. He delivered engaging and interactive sessions to the children, reading some of his most popular books.
Each class in Key Stage 2 had a class copy of James's book which he kindly signed for us.
The children loved the sessions with James, the roar of laughter filled both sites throughout the day.
"I wish he lived with me so he can read me bedroom stories." – Jayden Y2 (about James Campbell)
Author Visit- 2025
Douglas Caleb
Recently, we were visited by author and illustrator Douglas Caleb. He visited all the children in Key Stage 2, and delivered an inspriring session sharing tips and tricks for writing and illustrating.
The children were captivated during the sessions and enjoyed seeing the process of writing and illustrating books.
The children in Key Stage 2 have been inspired by the visit and are keen to start writing and publishing their own stories.
This was a brilliant way to kick start our celebrations for Wold Book Day 2025!