Reading

Reading at Corbridge Middle School

Why is reading so important?

Reading is fundamental. In fact, it is one of the most important ingredients to becoming all that you can be. Reading develops your brain, provides a window into the world around you and helps you do better in all school subjects. It’s a way to stimulate your creativity, to provoke thinking and to open up a whole, magical world of adventure. You gain a more ambitious, wider vocabulary from reading and it’s the size of your vocabulary that determines your life chances, so you can see why reading is the gateway to your future! As Roald Dahl observed, “If you are going to get anywhere in life, you have to read a lot of books.”

So, here at Corbridge, we want to encourage a love of books and a passion for reading in all our pupils and here is how we do it:

To encourage pupils to read each day, we ask them to record their reading in their journals and to get their parents or carers involved too, by sharing their child’s reading if they can, and signing their journal pages. In KS2, regular reading is rewarded with one of our Corbridge teddies in a range of colours, for the children to collect as their reading progresses. In KS3, we have reading challenges and competitions to promote a love of reading and diversity in texts, in preparation for high school and the demands of GCSEs. It’s important to become a lifelong reader, for pleasure as well as study, so we make sure pupils have new and different material to try and that they maybe read something they never considered before.
To promote a love of reading, we have an amazing school library, which is open every lunchtime and every breaktime, for precious reading time. It is run by Mrs Ramsey, our librarian, who runs reading groups, organises displays linked to topics taught in school, or relevant to our pupils’ lives, and will recommend books for the children to try. She is ably assisted by pupil librarians who are keen readers themselves and will help pupils choose books, suggest next texts and review their reading to help others. We are lucky that our PTA supports our library with kind donations and that our parents and teachers donate good quality, pre-loved books to swell our shelves. We also get the newest children’s books - many not even yet published - from our friends at Forum Books in Corbridge, which means our pupils are exposed to the best of new children’s literature, often long before others!

School Library

Y5 Reading List
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Y7 Reading List
File Size:	277 kb
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Y6 Reading List
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Y8 Reading List
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To help with accessing texts, we have our Corbridge Swap Shop, which is open to everyone and means that pupils can ‘swap’ their best reads for something new. This is situated in the entrance to school. Children can simply pick up a book to try and pop it back when they’re done. They are also encouraged to bring in a book that they have loved reading, in any genre, and leave it in the swap shop for others to read. Also, in the entrance, we display how we record and reward reading: our teddies and our rewards trolley, with a selection of books to choose from, chosen by our school librarians. Our teachers also have their own swap shop in the staffroom and recommend and share good reads with their colleagues too.
To support our passion for reading, we ask all pupils to read in registration each morning and afternoon. Our teachers will also have a dedicated time each week in which read a great book or poem to their class, share what they are reading in their spare time or ask for recommendations to give others ideas for what to read next. We are a school that loves reading!
To get pupils talking about books and reading, we have reading groups running through the library, celebrate World Book Day and National Poetry Day in school with a host of events, hold regular book fairs and author visits, share recommendations through book reviews for Forum bookshop in Corbridge and teachers regularly model reading for pleasure - check out what your teacher reads at home by looking on their classroom door! It’s updated every time they finish a book and might just inspire you too.