To help create children who are lifelong readers, we want to encourage and engage children in reading for pleasure through a core reading programme. 

The idea of the core readers, is that over their 7 years at Bookwell all children are read to, have enjoyed, discussed and worked with around at least 82 core books. These ‘essential reads’ would be a store of classics, creating a living library inside a child’s mind. This is the ‘Reading Spine’. 

Each class will have sets of core readers, 2 or 3 copies of quality texts chosen for their age group, which will create a reading spine.   All we ask of the children is to enjoy listening to the text with an adult and choose at least 2 words to ‘magpie’ (copy from the text) onto their reading passport.   These words should be new or unfamiliar words.  We will then be able to share these words in class to extend our vocabulary and hopefully store them in our brains to use them when it comes to our own story telling and writing.

We will not dictate which texts children take home and we will also encourage them to make their own choices from their class and school libraries and continue to encourage books they bring from home.  This is in addition to the stories they get to hear read to them in class. 

We do hope though, by having children in their class listen to the same stories, they will be able to talk to each other about what they have read and engage in exciting book talk, which encourages reading for pleasure and helps produce lifelong readers.