‘We shouldn’t teach great books we should teach a great love of reading'

Our Reading Mission:

At Hadrian Park Primary School, reading is at the heart of everything we do.  It shines through our classrooms, our staff and our children. From Early Years right up to Year 6, children are immersed in high quality and vocabulary rich texts. Staff share a love of stories with our children, transporting them to different worlds, igniting their imaginations, exposing them to the rich knowledge of non-fiction books.

From the moment children step through our doors, we teach them to be confident, fluent readers through a rigorous phonics programme that ensures by the time a child leaves our school, they are high school ready and ready to take on the world!

Therefore, it is our promise to all of our pupils that by the age of 7, every child will be a reader.  If they are not, we will do everything within our power to help children catch up, so that all children believe in the power of books and become life-long readers and learners.

Our Reading Spines:

At the heart of our Reading Curriculum are our book choices. The books experienced by our children have been especially selected to ignite an excitement around reading whilst simultaneously ensuring our children are exposed to rich variety of texts which challenge and open doors to new worlds.

 Our book choices are carefully mapped out in our reading spine which runs from Nursery right through to Year 6.

Below are samples of texts which appear on our reading spine:

Whole Class teaching:

At Hadrian Park Primary School, reading is taught through a whole class approach, enabling the teacher to work directly with all children on a daily basis. Skilled classroom adults guide children by identifying unfamiliar vocabulary and discovering the meaning of this new vocabulary. They explore exciting contexts of new books and texts. Classroom adults model the process of comprehending texts, scaffolding and supporting children, allowing children to be able to confidently and independently apply their skills. Children are immersed in rich and purposeful conversations about the text, in which children can ask questions to further their own understanding.

Accelerated Reader:

From recognising children’s achievements to children discovering new interests, Accelerated Reader helps create a culture of reading through choice. Personalised goals help students stay focused on the factors that matter most for reading growth—and help classroom adults monitor their progress and provide feedback to keep our children on track. Our children read their Accelerated Reading book every day and are able to select high quality and vocabulary rich texts from our extensive library.

Story time:

Reading matters at Hadrian Park Primary School!

At 3pm, every class stops what they are doing to share a story. Children listen to their classroom adult read a book to them in their own bespoke reading area. Classroom adults are committed to providing children with a memorable ending to their day by transporting them to new lands, introducing them to new characters and taking children on new battles and adventures. Adults can be seen wearing wigs, snuggling up in the reading living room or delving deeper into a story in a reading den.  We strongly believe in fully immersing children within a text, giving them a rich experience of the whole book in order to fully appreciate the magic of reading a good book.

Every child deserves to listen to an adult read them a story and at Hadrian Park Primary School this is exactly what we do! 

Reading spaces:

Each classroom offers an exciting and inviting area for adults to share stories with children or for children to visit in groups, pairs or simply on their own to delve deeper into the magic of a book. Have a look at some of our reading spaces we offer at Hadrian Park Primary School!

Reading partners:

Becoming good reading role models is a fundamental belief in our school. To showcase good reading skills, our Year 6 children read aloud to our Reception children showing them just how special reading a book really is.

Reading parent ambassadors:

Providing our children with a range of reading role models is a commitment our school makes to our children. Our incredible parent reading ambassadors volunteer to read with each child in each class every week. Our parent reading ambassadors help promote confident and passionate readers and show that a love of reading is a priority within our school community.

Reading Authors and Illustrators:

At Hadrian Park Primary School, we pride ourselves on making links with authors. We are lucky enough to have author visits whereby an author will share their book with our children and talk about how they became an author. We have enjoyed workshops from authors and illustrators in which authors teach us their writing approaches and illustrators teach us their illustrating tricks. 

Useful website links: