At Distington Community School the active encouragement of reading for pleasure is a core part of every child’s educational entitlement, whatever their background or attainment. We take the view that extensive reading and exposure to a wide range of texts makes a vital contribution to every child’s educational achievement. Our aim is to ensure that our children not only have the opportunity to learn to read (a time-limited skill) but to become lifelong readers for purpose and pleasure. They will become people who not only can read, but do read from a choice of wide variety of texts on paper and on screen. By giving our children the gift of reading, we show them that books, especially literature and poetry, have the power to inspire, to console, to heal and transform for the rest of their lives.

Recent research from ‘What and How Kids Are Reading (2019) by Renaissance identifies that ‘less than 1/4 of children read for pleasure for the recommended time’. Their findings also state that ‘Children that read for 15 minutes a day present accelerated growth in their academic attainment’.

These finding underpin our vision and passion for promoting reading for pleasure and therefore the development of reading across our school is a key priority.

Below you can read our reading for pleasure policy, which will provide you with further details of how we aim to achieve our reading vision.

Strive for 5! 

Strive for 5 is our half termly reading challenge. Children are encouraged to engage in a reading activity at home at least five times per week. Children who can achieve this every week of a half term receive a special certificate and a brand new book. 

Reading Raffle

Each time a child engages in a reading activity at home they receive a raffle ticket that is entered into our weekly reading raffle. The more a child reads at home, the more tickets they can earn. Each week the lucky winner can choose a prize to keep.