We are very proud of our reading culture here at St George’s School, and within the academy all of our pupils and staff recognise the importance we must place on reading.  Reading for pleasure develops further life skills and we are committed to helping our pupils develop their appreciation and understanding of the benefits of reading.

"Children who read for pleasure are likely to do significantly better at school than their peers"

(Institute of Education Research)

We believe that a strong and supportive home-school partnership is vital to ensuring that all pupils are encouraged to read widely, regularly and for pleasure.

USEFUL LINKS FOR ONLINE LEARNING

Amazon Kindle offer free downloads on all Classic books. Click Here.

Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. All of the texts on our St George’s Literary Canon List can be found here too. Click Here.

READING AMBASSADOR 

Our Reading Ambassadors are specially selected pupils who help to raise the profile of reading across the school.
Typically, our Ambassadors: are enthusiastic, regular readers, have an excellent track record of success with our Accelerated Reader Programme and are involved in the reading initiatives run by Mrs Wilson and the English Department.
In return for promoting reading and being a role model reader for other pupils in the school, our ambassadors are offered:

  • Training to become a Paired Reading Leader.
  • Exclusive access to The Learning Hub.
  • A highly commended recommendation from Mrs Wilson to use for their Prefect application at Key Stage Four.
  • The opportunity to gain credit towards the Duke of Edinburgh award.

RELUCTANT READER

Getting teenagers to read can seem a daunting task however, getting your son or daughter to pick up a book is a lot easier than it sounds.

Ideas for Helping Your Son/Daughter Enjoy Reading:

  • Make time to read together if you don't already.  30 minutes each day is a great start and is the amount of reading required, per day, for Accelerated Reader homework.
  • Encourage discussions about books. Talk about books or magazines you haven't enjoyed as well as the ones you have and ask questions about the book your child is currently reading.
  • Let your son/ daughter choose what to read, rather than choosing what you think they should read. You can guide however, using the comprehensive list of book recommendations found within the Key Stage Three Reading Passport.
  • Buy books as presents. You could consider TV, film and game links or books about any of your child’s current interests such as music.
  • Try some skimming and scanning together. Skimming is when you read through a piece of text quickly to find out what the main idea is; scanning is glancing through a piece of text to find a specific piece of information.
  • Help your child to work out what an unfamiliar word means by getting them to read the rest of the sentence and look for clues.
  • Help by testing your child when they have spellings to learn, and by encouraging them to look up words they don't know in a dictionary.
  • Build up the number of words your child knows (their vocabulary).  To help them learn these words, you could ask your child to explain to you what they mean.

Book Suggestions for Reluctant Readers

ACCELERATED READER AND THE READING PASSPORT

In Year 7 and 8, all of our pupils partake in the Accelerated Reader programme. This includes:

  • Set personalised reading targets that are updated each term.
  • Three opportunities to check improvements in reading age over the course of an academic year.
  • A dedicated lesson in The Learning Hub once a fortnight.
  • Teacher and librarian dedicated support for any reading challenges that may arise.

Pupils are expected to read for a minimum of 30 minutes a day as part of their English homework and complete at least one reading quiz biweekly.

To help engage with Accelerated Reader and gain the most they can out of the programme, all pupils are issued with a Reading Passport. This contains:

  • A reading Log for students to record and track their reading journey.
  • An extensive recommended reading list to ensure pupils are choosing appropriate books with the right level of challenge whilst still being interesting and engaging to read.
  • Any reading activities pupils are expected to complete over the course of the academic Year.

A copy of this Reading Passport can be found by clicking here.

Further suggested reading lists can be found on the School Reading List Website: Click here.

OUR LITERARY CANON BOOKLIST

At St George’s we have launched our very own, exciting 'Literary Canon'. This is a list of five books per year group, that pupils are expected to read over the course of their academic year. We have carefully chosen our texts to enhance our pupils' reading skills and provide them with a rich cultural capital for life.

 

Year 7

Year 8

Year 9

Year 10

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll

The Railway Children

E. Nesbit

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

Coral Island
R.M. Ballantyne

Peter Pan

J.M Barrie

Five Children and It

E. Nesbit

Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens

War of the Worlds
H.G Wells

The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

Black Beauty

Anna Sewell

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe

The Red Room

H.G Wells

White Fang

Jack London

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley

The Tell Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe

Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte

Heidi

Johanna Spyri

The Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling

Turn of the Screw

Henry James

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson