This International Literacy Day St Margaret’s celebrates the joy of reading and the importance of literacy as a right in a child’s education. There is evidence to show that a pupil who reads for just 20 minutes a day will, in one school year, have read the equivalent of 3,600 minutes and have encountered 1,800,000 words. There is further evidence to show that reading, whilst having the obvious positive impact on literacy skills, also impacts positively on the pupils’ numeracy development.
Reading allows us to travel to many different worlds and certainly opens up our minds and by creating early positive experiences with reading children will benefit for many years to come. It is good to remember that reading encompasses all types of books and publications, including magazines, newspapers, comics and factual books. They all constitute reading and are great ways to demonstrate and share reading for enjoyment with children.
At our annual Speech Day, we welcomed guest speaker renowned literary agent Jenny Brown of Jenny Brown Associates to address the gathered audience. Jenny emphasised the importance of reading for pleasure as she believes that stories are the foundation of society and that reading allows us to explore different worlds and perspectives. She encouraged the audience to rediscover the joy of reading and highlighted the benefits it brings throughout life.
Each week at St Margaret's on a Thursday morning during form time we all stop to read for pleasure. This initiative began last year with specific year groups and is being developed further across the school.
Inspiring reading material is plentiful after the complete overhaul of our library stock and the purchase of hundreds of new books!
To find out more about how St Margaret's emphasises the importance of literacy in everything we do, come along to our OPEN MORNING on Saturday, 7th October. Register here.