Pupils share the love of reading

Pupils from Springwell Park Primary School in Bootle have recently set up an initiative at its school to share its love of reading.

The school have set up the ‘Springwell Community Library’, where the parents can help themselves to novels of all genres during drop off and pick up time at no cost at all and they are theirs to keep. 

The school is hoping that, by having access to this library, they are removing any potential barriers that could be stopping them from reading for pleasure. 

Tom Hanlon, Year 2 teacher and English lead at Springwell Park Primary, said: “Reading is a big focus of ours. We are always thinking of ways of increasing our reading identity even more. Understandably, we have been focusing a lot on encouraging our pupils’ with their reading.

“Recently, we realised that we could be doing more for our Springwell family as a whole, including the parents. Parents and carers play a pivotal role in their child’s education, and we wanted to try and encourage them to read for pleasure more, and by doing so, they would be an active role model to their child.

“In order to eradicate any potential barriers that could be stopping our parents and carers from reading, we created our own Springwell Community Library. At drop off and pick up time, our parents and carers are able to help themselves to books from the library, free of charge. It has been a huge success so far and has created wonderful book talk between adults and children alike.

“It is so nice seeing the parents and their children gathered around the library at home time.”

Headteacher, Miss Tracy Webley said: “At Springwell Park our commitment to the importance of reading is visible all around our school. But, we wanted to share our love of reading with our whole school community. So, listening to our families excitedly chatting about their community library book choices has been amazing.

“It’s developing this shared love of reading that will make the biggest difference to the lives of our children.”

The books were all donated from a community Facebook page but now parents and staff have also now started donating too to replenish stock.

The school are continually finding new ways to encourage more pupils to pick up a good book. 

One of the school’s schemes to inspire pupils to read more was the introduction of ‘reading stairs’.

Tom Hanlon, Year 2 teacher and English lead, said: “Looking beyond traditional posters and displays on walls, we instead chose to transform the school’s Key Stage Two staircase into ‘reading stairs’. 

 “Each step has had the title of must-read books printed on it. Staff then set pupils the challenge of reading all of these books and ‘completing’ the staircase by the time they leave school.

“Each text is of high quality and is an incredible read that we know they will enjoy.”

The response from the pupils’ parents has also been very positive with one parent, saying: “This is the best library ever. It’s so convenient and definitely encourages Selena to read. Many thanks. It also saves me a fortune to buy the books and I’m so happy to see her read every night.”

Another parent said: “What an amazing idea! It’s so lovely to see how excited all the children are at the end of the day, gathered at the library choosing their next book to read. I love to see children taking an interest in reading”.

Books include: Letters from the Lighthouse by Emma Carroll, The 1000-year-old Boy by Ross Welford, The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd as well as Malala: My Story for Standing Up for Girls Rights by Malala Yousafzai.