Early Reading
At Healdswood we strongly believe that children adopt a love of reading through sharing stories and books on a regular basis. We expect and encourage parents to hear their child to read at least three times per week. In school we help children develop their love of reading in the following ways:
Throughout the school, beginning in Nursery, we use our own Healdswood systematic synthetic phonics scheme - 'Get Set for Phonics!' which is underpinned by the jolly phonics actions. All children have daily phonics sessions.
Over the course of the year, teachers run sessions for parents giving more information about the teaching of phonics and reading in school. Parents are informed of these sessions via dojo and parents we cannot attend receive a recording of the session. We do not use a specific reading scheme, we use books from a variety of sources throughout school, which are grouped into ‘Book Bands’. They begin on lilac band and progress through a range of colours to white band. Our banded books are aligned to our phonics scheme so that children can succeed and achieve in their reading.
We strongly encourage parents to read with their child every night. All children have a reading diary which is a record for both the parents and teacher to use. It is a good way of communicating with the teacher about your child’s progress in reading at home.
How to get the most from your home reading:
Here is a guide to our reading book bands:
Reading Across the Curriculum
At Healdswood, we promote a love of reading throughout the whole curriculum with books and stories
being at the heart of everything we do! Have a look below at how reading is embedded into the curriculum:
How can I support my child with reading at home?
Supporting you child with reading at home is so beneficial to ensuring they progress in reading. Research shows that reading and developing a love of reading is directly linked to a child's success at school. As a school we expect children to read at home 3-5 times a week. Below are a range of ideas and tips to support your child with reading at home.
After your child has finished their reading encourage them to talk about the book, try finding out
Games and activities are a good way to help your child deepen their understanding of the book –
Have a look below to see how
reading is celebrated in our school!
World Book Day 2021
Today in school we celebrate World Book Day (a week late so that all children could celebrate in school!). We had a super time dressing as our favourite book characters and making wooden spoon characters at home. In school we celebrated our 'Author of the Term', Jill Murphy by reading her stories and completing activities linked to these. We all had a great day!
World Book Day 2020
We had another amazing World Book Day this year. All the staff and children wowed us with their amazing costumes, a big thank you to parents and carers for all their efforts. This year we looked at the author Oliver Jeffers and each class focused on a different one of his books. We also ran a 'World Spud Day' competition where children turned a potato into their favourite book character. Have a look below to see photos of how we celebrated the day.
Healdswood
'Look for a Book'
Welcome to our Healdswood 'Look for a Book' page. 'Look for a Book' is a reading treasure hunt which gives the children the chance to spread our school's love of reading around the local community.
The staff at our school hid almost 30 books around the school grounds and Skegby area for you to find! If you are lucky enough to find a book please follow these steps:
1. Take a photograph of the book
2. Enjoy reading the book
3. Re-hide the book for someone else to enjoy
Please email photos to our school office so that we can see how far our books have travelled!
office@healdswood.notts.sch.uk
Have a look below at the children who have enjoyed discovering our books so far!
Stanton Hill Library Visits
Every other Friday afternoon, KS1 visit the library in Stanton Hill. The children all have their own library card and are free to have a look at the books and borrow a book each visit. We all know how to use the computer systems to log our books in and out too!
New Library - Now Open!
Our brand new library is now open and our children have loved coming to visit and explore the new books. Every child is able to visit the library each week with their class and choose a book to take home.
World Book Day 2019
We had a blast on World Book Day! The day kicked off with an assembly where we learnt about World Book Day and each class performed a catwalk to show off their amazing costumes. Thank you parents and carers - everyone looked fab! We decided to centre this year's World Book Day on one of our favourite authors Julia Donaldson throughout school with each class choosing a book to focus on. In classes we did lots of literacy and art activities about our chosen book. We enjoyed reading lots of stories throughout the day. A big thank you to everyone who came to our after school book fair.