At Meadow Park Academy, we believe that a high-quality education in reading will teach our children to read, write and speak fluently so that they can communicate effectively with others. Reading lies at the heart of our curriculum at Meadow Park. We value reading as a key life skill and our overarching aim is to promote high standards of reading throughout all year groups, by equipping our pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word.

We strive for our children to achieve a deep love of reading through a wide range of high-quality, thought-provoking and challenging texts, and to develop their understanding and acceptance of the world around them through a diverse range of authors and literature. We are also committed to cultivating independent thinkers who understand more about the world in which they live, through carefully selected, vocabulary-rich reading material.

Within the context of reading, we believe that literate children should:

• Use a range of strategies including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning, with confidence, fluency and understanding;
• Understand, describe and retrieve information, ideas or events from a text and use quotations accurately;
• Infer or interpret information, ideas or events from a text;
• Have and use suitable technical vocabulary through which to understand and discuss their reading;
• Summarise and sequence the main ideas from a text;
• Identify and comment on writers’ purposes and viewpoints and the overall effect of a text on the reader;
• Make accurate predictions from a text using the details stated and implied;
• Relate texts to their social, cultural and historical contexts and literacy traditions;
• Read a range of genres in fiction and poetry;
• Through reading and writing, develop their powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness;
• Discuss books with reference to author, illustrator, genre, theme and characters in order to express personal responses with increasing fluency;
• Be interested in books, read with enthusiasm and enjoyment and justify their personal preferences.

Ultimately, we believe that reading is the key to academic success. It is our intention that by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently and with confidence in any subject across the curriculum to secure success in their forthcoming education.

At Meadow Park we aim to

• Provide children with a rich diet of high-quality texts through story times, end of the day reads and topic;

• Provide our children with the skills and strategies necessary to develop into competent and fluent readers;
• Encourage pupils to develop a life-long enjoyment of books;
• Develop our children’s research skills, using library and class texts, in conjunction with electronic texts;
• Encourage pupils to care and respect the value of books;
• Form a critical appreciation of the work of authors, poets and illustrators in order to emulate these skills in their own writing.

We are delighted to announce the launch of our brand-new library!

Staff have been working hard to deliver a completely renovated, re-stocked and revamped library for all our pupils to foster a love of reading and develop their ability to read.

The project

We recognise how important reading is as a life skill for all our students and we want to develop life-long readers.

The project began with a huge audit of our stock and ensuring only exciting, relevant and good quality books remained – there were lots of books donated to charity!

We also had the entire space redecorated and carpeted. We decided on a space theme which has been very popular!

Next was the order of all our lovely new furniture which was a £10,000 purchase! It was worth every penny as it has really made the space organised and inviting.

We have also spent a lot of time and money organising and updating our stock as well as purchasing software so books can be scanned in and out – giving that real library experience!

The library use

Every class has an allocated weekly slot to visit the library. All children will go with their class teacher, regardless of if they need to change their book. They will be encouraged to quietly enjoy a book in the space while others change their books.

Every child will be allowed 2 book loans at any time. Lost or damaged books will need to be replaced to a cost of £7.99, although we understand some accidents happen and will support where that is the case!

1. A book from the new MPA reading spine. They will be allocated a branch of the spine which they can choose books from based on class teacher judgement. These are age-appropriate books and offer a range of high-quality literature to expand the children’s knowledge.

 

2) A ‘free choice’ book. This can be any other picture book; novel; graphic novel; poetry anthology or non-fiction text which match their interests.

So far, the library has been a HUGE hit with the children which has been a joy to see. Learning to read and fostering a love of reading are two very different but equally important things to us.

Please see below some testimonials from the children in Year 5:

• Joshua - The library was amazing. I loved all the books, the creativity was spectacular and all the seating areas were great. 
• Oscar - I love the library because it has lots of cool books and I like the rocket ship clock! 
• Darcie - Thank you so much for the library, it was amazing and I love the space theme. 
• Faith - Thank you for putting so much effort into the new library, it is so amazing and I hope everyone loves it just as much as I do. 
• Sara - The library was perfect! I love all of the effort you guys put into it. Love the theme, love everything! Very grateful. 
• Vienna - I absolutely love our library, I can tell you put so much effort into it, and it turned out better than I thought. I love the tunnel part too. 
• Jonathan - Clean and glamorous, like the astronaut vibes. Keep up the good work! 
• Amelia - Thank you for making this for us and we love it! I wish I could have all the books! 

We have also created additional recommended reads for each year group for any children looking for further inspiration on what to read for pleasure.

Please see the attachments for these below for each year group.