St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School set up their “Reading Squad”
Our mission is to make sure everyone knows how amazing reading is! We are developing a love of reading for the whole of St Teresa’s school family. We decided that we wanted to continue the love of reading, that developed in the classroom and our new school library, outside during playtimes and lunchtimes. The weather was our greatest enemy, and we knew we needed a way of keeping the books safe and dry.
We discovered ‘little libraries’ but we knew they would be expensive to buy. We decided to reach out to all of the parents through the school Facebook page to ask for help and we were not disappointed. After sharing design ideas, we have so far received two libraries. Our care taker painted and varnished them to make them weatherproof and we then helped to decide the perfect places for them on the Key Stage 1 and Key stage 2 yards. All that was left to do was to fill them with books and thanks to more donations, we able to add lots of different texts.
Our school family love them and can often be found sharing stories outside on our outdoor beanbags! We would love more of the ‘little libraries’ so that we can enjoy stories on the field and in our Early Years outdoor areas.
We also read stories to some of the younger members of our school family, we write the reading newsletters to keep everyone up to date with everything that is happening in our school, we keep the books and reading areas tidy for everyone to enjoy and recommend stories to others.
We have recently persuaded Mrs Strachan to subscribe to the Reading Rocks book boxes so that we are constantly updating the library and the ‘little libraries’ with new texts.
Sharing stories at St Teresa’s also continues at home with our digital library. Children and their parents can click on lots of different books covers in the library and a link will take them straight to a video or an author reading the whole text, an extract of the text or a discussion about the text.
Try it for yourself! What will you choose?