Queen Mary Avenue Infant and Nursery School

A love of reading at QMA

At Queen Mary we believe the gateway to learning for all children is through a love of reading. We have carefully selected a diverse variety of texts to explore in school throughout the curriculum and especially for pleasure. We enjoy story time daily and all staff participate in reading a story or poem each week in assembly. We have introduced new books into our class libraries and developed our reading areas throughout the school. It is evident that children enjoy listening to, reading and retelling these stories throughout their time here at QMA!

On this page you will be able to watch the staff at QMA reading their favourite stories, which you can enjoy at home.

Bronze Reading Award

In April 2024 we were recognised for our enthusiasm and dedication to promoting a love of reading throughout our school. The Lincolnshire Reading Pledge awarded us Bronze Award which we were delighted to recieve.

We had to meet certain criteria to gain this award which included all children taking home a 'reading for pleasure' book and a reading book matched to their reading ability. Celebrating 'World Book day', National Poetry Day' and partaking in reading challenges. As you walk through school it is obvious that reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We now look forward to working towards the Silver Award.

Intent:

At Queen Mary Avenue Infant & Nursery School it is our intent to provide children with the foundations to learn how to read by delivering quality first teaching of our phonics programme across EYFS and Key stage 1. Alongside this we plan and provide enthusiastic lessons which develop the children’s reading, speaking and listening skills and will improve their life skills. Through discussion we build and introduce new vocabulary to help expand their understanding to support them in all areas of the curriculum. We want to ignite children’s curiosity and love of reading for pleasure, we do this through basing our learning around carefully chosen, engaging, high quality texts.

Implementation:

We will achieve this by:

All teachers following the reading policy and lesson structure to ensure consistency across the school.

Grouping children homogeneously using the Read, Write Inc. assessments and children attending daily enthusiastic phonics sessions.

Children working collaboratively with their peers to develop and improve their reading skills.

Exploring quality texts and consistently using effective questioning to develop their reading skills and vocabulary.

Home reading books are matched to the children’s current reading stage. We expect families at home to read these books with their child daily.

Using our library which promotes fiction and non-fiction books for children to use.

Inspiring and engaging book corners which contain books linked to the current topic.

Daily opportunities for children to apply their reading and inference skills through answering questions verbally and in written form.

Continuously being involved in hearing a diverse range of texts in class.

Daily class story time throughout school using ‘talk through stories’ which develops vocabulary, comprehension and understanding.

Promoting a love of reading in weekly story themed whole school assemblies where favourite stories are shared by staff members.

Print-rich learning environments and working walls throughout the school using the pre-cursive font and modelling the school handwriting policy.

Impact:

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and quality first teaching, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of year 1 so children can focus on developing their comprehension skills and achieve age related expectation. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1.