At Meadow Park Academy, we believe that a high-quality education in reading will teach our children to read, write and speak fluently so that they can communicate effectively with others. Reading lies at the heart of our curriculum at Meadow Park. We value reading as a key life skill and our overarching aim is to promote high standards of reading throughout all year groups, by equipping our pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word.

We strive for our children to achieve a deep love of reading through a widerange of high quality, thought-provoking and challenging texts, and to develop their understanding and acceptance of the world around them through a diverse range of authors and literature. We are also committed to cultivating independent thinkers who understand more about the world in which they live, through carefully selected, vocabulary-rich reading material.

Within the context of reading, we believe that literate children should:

• Use a range of strategies including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning, with confidence, fluency and understanding;
• Understand, describe and retrieve information, ideas or events from a text and use quotations accurately;
• Infer or interpret information, ideas or events from a text;
• Have and use suitable technical vocabulary through which to understand and discuss their reading;
• Summarise and sequence the main ideas from a text;
• Identify and comment on writers’ purposes and viewpoints and the overall effect of a text on the reader;
• Make accurate predictions from a text using the details stated and implied;
• Relate texts to their social, cultural and historical contexts and literacy traditions;
• Read a range of genres in fiction and poetry;
• Through reading and writing, develop their powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness;
• Discuss books with reference to author, illustrator, genre, theme and characters in order to express personal responses with increasing fluency;
• Be interested in books, read with enthusiasm and enjoyment and justify their personal preferences.

Ultimately, we believe that reading is the key to academic success. It is our intention that by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently and with confidence in any subject across the curriculum to secure success in their forthcoming education.

At Meadow Park we aim to

• Provide children with a rich diet of high quality texts through story times, end of the day reads and topic;

• Provide our children with the skills and strategies necessary to develop into competent and fluent readers;
• Encourage pupils to develop a life-long enjoyment of books;
• Develop our children’s research skills, using library and class texts, in conjunction with electronic texts;
• Encourage pupils to care and respect the value of books;
• Form a critical appreciation of the work of authors, poets and illustrators in order to emulate these skills in their own writing.

6 Book Challenge

With this in mind, we have created the ‘6 Book Challenge.’ Each year group, including EYFS, have 6 books selected and displayed on their golden bookshelf in their classroom, for them to read throughout the course of the school year and various certificates and prizes are up for grabs as they make their way through each of the texts. Children will ‘sign up’ to read a copy of these books - although of course they can purchase their own copy if preferred. Children will be able to borrow these books to share with their families at home and to enhance their enjoyment. We therefore ask that they are supported in taking care of these.

Please see the attachments below for your child's year group book list. 

Further recommended reads

We have also created additional recommended reads for each year group for any children looking for further inspiration on what to read for pleasure.

Please see the attachments for these below for each year group. 

Extra Reading Challenges

We have created some fun and engaging activities for you and your child to try at home together during the school year. Once you have completed one of the tasks, cross it off and move on to the next! You could even take a photo of your child completing their reading tasks to show their teacher! Remember, there is no rush – the most important thing is to enjoy reading with your child and to support them in their reading journey.

Each child that completes all the reading tasks will receive a special certificate and maybe even a prize!

Please see these in the attachments below.