Reading at O Castro

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”

An important function of every successful school is to ensure that communication between the wider community is strong and effective. At O Castro this year we have given an extra focus on student reading, and at the start of the term we opened our new secondary library and with it created opportunities for our students to help coordinate this. The new student library leader roles will help to both run the library at lunch and breaks and also encourage activities to engage students from across the school.

Communication with our families

Our year also began by ensuring we had a deeper understanding from our families and parents of how they read or encourage reading at home. The reading survey that was sent covered aspects such as parental feelings towards reading, time dedicated, and, of course, challenges with ensuring that this happens at home! We all understand how hectic our families' lives are and, alongside this, the way that children's screen time needs to be managed. The response to the survey was incredibly useful and highlighted the importance of this for parents and also the questions and issues they face. These results were summarized and shared with our parents in a communication in early October, and key trends can be seen below.

Parent Workshop

With this information in hand, the next stage was to invite our parents to dig deeper into this, both in what the results mean and also how that will help us plan for this and future years. The Parent Reading Workshop was also an opportunity for us to explain to parents how we read with our students and, of course, why. We discussed steps to success for reading at home, demonstrating useful reading strategies and looking at making it a fun and relaxing experience for children.

Next Steps

Throughout this year, we will run monthly events, involving families as much as possible, with a different reading theme. Thus, exposing children to a range of genres and help them to find a book or genre that they love. This will include a non-fiction month, Comic Con, poetry and a readathon. We will also be celebrating our annual reading events, such as Globeducate READS across the Globeducate community.

Another priority is ensuring that families have access to high quality books in a range of languages, which we will aid through our biannual book fairs and termly book swaps.

In addition, over the course of the year, there will also be videos shared via email and Class Dojo, which promote a selection of books that can be enjoyed at home.

Our overall goal is to establish a true reading for pleasure culture within O Castro, in which our children enjoy reading and talking about books not just because they have to for lessons but because they want to. A culture in which children choose to read individually and together, recommending books to each other and are not afraid to try something new because, as we all know, the social, emotional and cognitive benefits of reading are huge.