Reading at Home

Pupils at St Felix enjoy reading and believe they are good at it. (Pupil Voice March 2024).

At St Felix, reading is prioritised from Nursery to Y6 with a rigorous and sequential approach to our comprehensive reading curriculum which develops pupils’ prosody, confidence and enjoyment in reading. Pupils read widely and often, with fluency and comprehension appropriate to their age from a range of rich and varied texts.

According to the International Reading Association (May 2012):
Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives. They will need literacy to cope with the flood of information they will find everywhere they turn. They will need literacy to feed their imaginations so they can create the world of the future. In a complex and sometimes even dangerous world, their ability to read can be crucial.

Why does this matter?

Pupils who only read in school when directed by adults will not develop as the readers described above. The Ofsted English Research Review 2022 shares the extensive research into reading for pleasure, which indicates a positive correlation between pupil's engagement with reading and their attainment in reading.

Reading at home or for pleasure does not require an extensive or expensive array of texts. Pupils can borrow books from the school library or join the local library. A discussion with pupils at school in February 2024 revealed that all children spoken to had access to books at home but were not always encouraged to read them by adults or saw their parents reading. Devices were the main distraction but this does not need to be a binary choice. E-books are just as good as physical books. Suffolk libraries have an e-book service which you can access on a range of devices. Kindles and iPads are ideal for some pupils as a way to read books in a familiar format.

Wondering what to read?

Below you can find copies of the PiXL Reading for Pleasure newsletter. Each issue is full of helpful suggestions to find ways to read more at home and book reviews to help you choose a book your child will enjoy.

Here are some further suggestions from our pupils:

Pupil Christmas Book recommendations 2023

Helpful links:

St Felix Reading for Pleasure Strategy