Our aim is for children at Coltishall to be avid readers who read fluently, widely and for pleasure, to have opinions about what they read and to express preferences. We want them to access a wide range of text types, genres and authors during their time at Coltishall.

Beyond this it is vital that our children are able to access the information about the world in which we live and to understand its people past and present. Being informed and well read, being able to express thoughts and opinions clearly and coherently, being able to listen with understanding is the way in which our children will contribute to and take their place in a fair and more tolerant world.

Coltishall Primary School Reading Spine hopes to foster a love of reading in all it forms - and to take children on a ‘journey’ throughout their time at our school, experiencing authors and stories from a variety of eras, places, backgrounds and ethnic origins.   We celebrate diversity and have chosen a wide variety of themes and genres as part of each year group’s suggested text list.  We have worked hard to ensure children are exposed to both modern and classic texts, texts written by and role-modeling men and women, texts linked to foundation subjects and current affairs, and texts that promote discussion around our school values.  Our text choices also give opportunities to experience a range of time sequencing including non-linear, archaic language in classic fiction, different narrator voices, figurative and symbolic language and ‘resistant’ texts that require readers to assembly meaning - this is particularly effective when reading poetry.  

Children are immersed in different text types during English lessons, whole class reading, foundation subjects, library time and during our class ‘love of reading’ time, which is timetabled for every class.  

We use novels, film clips, picture books and poetry to drive most writing outcomes (alongside our foundation subject linked non-fiction writing outcomes, which are researched using a range of subject specific non-fiction texts including books and websites). In Years 1 and 2, where the curriculum is theme-led, books are chosen to support the theme and the cohort. Novels chosen in Key Stage Two are from a range of different genres, ensuring that children are exposed to high quality, broad and varied literature.

Reading for Pleasure

Each class has timetabled daily reading for pleasure time. This might include quiet reading, book groups, book talk, class reading communities and sharing recommendations. Our school library is open at lunchtimes and buddy group children share books with their peers on the playground during breaks. We also have a half termly reading for pleasure assembly where teachers recommend books from our school library to the children, and through our book tokens scheme, children have the opportunity to win books to read at home.