Reading for Pleasure
Hunslet Moor’s ‘A Year of Reading’
January
In January 2022, Hunslet Moor launched ‘A Year of Reading’. An action plan of Reading related activities and events was planned to excite and enthuse Hunslet Moor children about Reading. Each month was carefully planned to coincide with worldwide events or National book themed days so that everything we did was meaningful as well as fun!
February
In February, the Scholastic Bookfair arrived. We ran a competition called ‘Extreme Reading.’ To enter, the children emailed in photographs of themselves reading in peculiar places. The winners won £5 book vouchers to spend at the Bookfair. Each night, for a week, hundreds of children and families came to peruse the shelves and over £500 worth of books was spent. This meant that as a school, Scholastic kindly allowed us to choose over £200 worth of books for our classroom libraries.
March
‘World Book Day’ is celebrated in over 100 countries all over the globe and is a charity that operates in the UK and Ireland. It changes lives through a love of books and reading. Their mission is to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. At HMPS, we decided to come together and mark the special day by reading and collaborating on the same book. We chose, ‘An Emotional Menagerie: An A to Z of Feelings’ by The School of Life. Each class read two different poems in the book and dressed in the colour that their chosen feeling represented. We had so much fun! We can’t wait to celebrate World Book Day on 2 March 2023 next year.
April
In April it was ‘International Children’s Book Day.’ On this day, countries around the world honor the birthday of Hans Christian Anderson who wrote hundreds of world-famous children’s books. We decided to celebrate this special day by coming together as a whole school and reading one of his most well-loved books: The Emperor’s New Clothes. Children in each class came to school dressed in their favourite clothes and we spent the day reading Hans Christian Anderson’s books, creating artwork, writing poems and researching the life and times of Anderson, as well as many other things.
May
Each May, school children around the country get very excited because just for one day they are allowed to come to school still wearing their pyjamas! ‘Pyjamarama’ is a special day organsied by The Book Trust whose aim it is to make sure that no child goes to bed without a night-time story. Each child was asked to donate £1 and come to school for the day in their PJ’s. We had so much fun curling up in the library, drinking hot chocolate, reading stories, and walking around in our slippers all day! We even raised almost £100 for The Book Trust. We can’t wait for next year.
June
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, lots of libraries had to shut. This made us very sad. It also meant that when our local library reopened its doors to the public and local schools, we were there at the front of the queue waiting to pile in! Our first sessions started in June and we absolutely loved walking to Deswbury Road library where we got to choose books for our classroom bookshelves and meet our friendly librarians. We love going to the library and each class still goes once a week.
July- August
Just because the academic year was drawing to a close didn’t mean we were about to stop celebrating reading at Hunslet Moor. In partnership with Leeds Libraries, we launched their annual Summer Reading Challenge. This year’s offering was called ‘The Gadgeteers’ and children were encouraged to continue reading and visiting the library throughout the school holidays. Children who regularly read won prizes such as certificates and medals. When school reopened in September, these children were so excited to tell their new teacher all about their Summer achievement.
September
Children in KS2 were invited to attend a Virtual Author Visit from Radio One DJs Greg James and Chris Smith. To celebrate the release of their new book, ‘Superghost,’ they hosted a fun online appearance for schools in the UK. As well as reading some of their book to us, they dressed up as funny Super Heroes and gave away some of their super-secret, story-writing tips. Their inspiring (and very funny) methods of writing made us laugh out loud! We also got a free copy of their book for our school library.
October
Ensuring the reading diet and wider curriculum is as inclusive as possible is really at the heart of everything we do at Hunslet Moor. We want all of our children to see themselves represented in the work that we do and in the lessons we teach. This year we really wanted Black History Month to have a reading focus. Reading related activities took place over the three weeks leading up to half term. On Monday 3 October we launched BHM with a whole school assembly. Then each class in the school studied books with the following titles: The Story of Martin Luther King, Respect, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, Amazing Artists, The Walter Tull Scrapbook, Story of Slavery, Groundbreaking Scientists, Resistance and Abolition, Nelson, Hidden Figures and Punishment and Slavery.
November
We celebrated Children’s Book Week for an entire month in November. We launched a month-long competition designed to inspire children and families to read together more at home. The winners in each class were the children who read the most at home over the month of November. Each winner won a certificate and a brand new book to read at home.
December
Every Christmas at Hunslet Moor, we gift the children a book to take home. The children love picking their present from a range of picture books, non-fiction, fiction or even poetry books. We love to think that by the time they leave us at the end of Year 6, every child will have a small collection of books to treasure.
The rest of the year has LOTS in store, culminating in a huge Reading-themed party in January to celebrate ‘A Year of Reading’.
R Burdett
Reading Lead
