Reading

Our vision

At Park Hill Junior School, we believe in creating a ‘love of reading’ culture. Our aim is to ensure that all children can say that they enjoy reading and are able to talk about the texts that they read. We are all readers and it is important to us that pupils experience a vast range of texts and authors from across the globe, helping them to become curious about the world around them.

Reading at PHJS

Children are encouraged to read books that they enjoy, and also books that challenge them. This is why the books available in school are labelled with a ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development). This is a reading level. At the start of each half term, children complete an online comprehension, presenting them with a ZPD range (e.g. 2.1 – 3.1). This allows children to make book choices that help their reading ability and confidence to continue progressing throughout their time at PHJS. Please note that a ZPD range is generated based on each pupil’s ability to answer retrieval and inference questions correctly from a variety of passages and not on the fluency or speed of their reading.

Our school library is a pride at our school and each week classes have the opportunity to visit and swap their books. Not only do we have guided reading activities each day, PHJS celebrates reading with regular special days and visits from authors and poets. The Scholastic Book Fair is held twice yearly and events such as World Book Week, National Storytelling Week and World Poetry Day are celebrated exclusively!

In our daily guided reading sessions, children focus on a particular key reading skill: vocabulary, summarising, inferring, predicting, explaining and retrieving. We also haves ‘Non-fiction Friday’, providing children the experience of using non-fiction texts to research, gather information and learn more about their current curricular theme.

Aspirational Readers

Each half term, the class teacher will select a child from their class who has proven to be an Aspirational Reader. The children are celebrated in school assembly and awarded with a special purple tie to wear as part of their uniform until the following half term. To become an Aspirational Reader, a child must display most or all of the following:

Engagement well in guided reading lessons and with a range of books.
An effort to meet their reading targets (displayed at the front of their guided reading books).
Showing progression in their Accelerated Reader quiz scores.
Selecting books within their ZPD range.
Being enthusiastic about books and poems.
Recommending books to others.

Accelerated Reader

Once a child has finished reading a book that has a ZPD, they are encouraged to take the book’s quiz on the Accelerated Reader – you can find this in the ‘Quicklinks’ on the top right of this website. Once a child has completed 10 quizzes of 100%, they become an AR Champion and are celebrated in merit assembly on Friday. As well as a certificate documenting their achievement, they are entered into a half termly raffle to win a free book of their choice!

You can use the following link to access your child’s quiz results: HomeConnect

Once logged in you can enter your contact details to receive their quiz marks via email. To log in you will need to use your child’s school log in details.

Click here for the AR Booklet.

How can I find books that are at my child’s current level?

In Google, type ‘AR book find’ or go to the website www.arbookfind.co.uk

Here you can search for particular book titles to see what level the text has been rated at (this will show next to BL for ‘book level’). Please note that not all books are in the system. You may also conduct an advanced search to generate book lists that contain titles based on the criteria you enter, such as a specific book level, interest level and whether you are searching for fiction/non-fiction recommendations.

Park Hill Junior School