During their time at Bishop Bronescombe, we want our children to have experience of a wide range of high quality reading materials. It is our view that there are a number of texts – fiction, non-fiction and poetry – that all children should be exposed to when they are at primary school.
In consultation with reading experts such as Doug Lemov, Pie Corbett, Ashley Booth and the teachers at BB, as well as referring to the National Curriculum, we have put together a reading spine – a selection of stories, poems and information books that we believe children shouldn’t leave primary school without having heard or seen. Some of these will be chosen as the class story, some will be texts that support other areas of the curriculum, some will be studied as part of whole class reading lessons and some may be recommended to children by teachers or other children.
Our selection of fiction and poetry comprises texts that are challenging because they may have been written some time ago and use unfamiliar vocabulary; texts where events are told from different perspectives, and texts where inference is required as the meaning isn’t clear and clues from the text are needed to understand the theme, plot or characters. In addition, we have aimed to be diverse in the cultures (including Cornish) that the texts represent as well as including stories and poems which address larger issues such as bullying, emotional well-being or caring for our planet. Equally, we wanted to include non-fiction texts, where information is organised in different ways therefore as well as non-fiction books we use websites, magazines, biographies, leaflets and news articles. These aren’t the only books that children will read or have read to them while at school, but they will make up a large proportion of our teaching of reading. As new books are published, we will revise and update our reading spine to include those that will be beneficial for classes to use.