PRE-PREP
Over the last couple of weeks, the children in Pre-Prep have dived into books and engaged with the BCS Reading Challenge. Reading allows us to immerse ourselves in another character’s world or to relate to a familiar setting or character. Books can be mirrors and windows to exciting new worlds. We are so proud of the children – and thankful to the parents – for wholeheartedly participating in this meaningful challenge: fostering a love of reading. These texts can be borrowed from the Pre-Prep library: over Christmas, the children will borrow a book of their choice and they will be encouraged to select a text from the BCS Recommended Reading List. The children will continue to have access to some of these books for the rest of the academic year (during their weekly library visit). Let’s take a look at some of the children’s impressive book reviews as we continue to share these high quality texts.
Mrs Kavanagh Finch
PREP
Since we launched the Reading Cloud just two weeks ago the pupils have really embraced the new way of choosing and reserving books. There have been an incredible 1173 logins and over 300 reservations placed! In order to manage the circulation of this number of books, each year group has a book delivery and collection day:
Monday Y3, Tuesday Y5, Wednesday Y4 and Thursday Y6. On Friday I will deliver any remaining reservations across all year groups.
Of course due to the Reading Challenge to read all of the Recommended Reading List books there is extra demand for these titles so I suggest children reserve several choices so that they always get a book if they need it.
As part of the Reading Challenge children have to show they have read the books by writing a review on Reading Cloud. There have already been 220 reviews written in the last two weeks, mainly of the list books. These are all approved and cleared of major spoilers before appearing on the site like this:
Reviews are also visible at the bottom of the screen when clicking through to reserve a book or read more information. Here is an example by Sofia in Year 5 which does a great job of helping the reader know whether they want to try this book next or not.
I have loved reading all of the brilliant reviews and can tell from the books being reserved that the children are reading them too. A peer to peer recommendation can be much more powerful than another adult telling a child what to read! Best of all for the children, they are rewarded with two house points for every book review they write and have the chance to attend an event with Mr Neeson at the end of the school year if they write a review for each of the Reading List books.
All in all, it has been an incredibly successful start to the Reading Challenge with our pupils showing great positivity and commitment to the new system.
Ms Stacey
