Spotlight on Reading at BPS
It is the week of World Book Day; a time for celebrating books and promoting literature. Here at BPS, this is just one of the many special events and initiatives the English department uses to nurture a love of reading within school.
The BPS English curriculum is carefully designed to dovetail with the national curriculum and to stretch our girls above and beyond age-related expectations. Our literature spine is inspiring, engaging and promotes progression across a girl’s BPS journey. In Kindergarten, great fun is had discussing the pictures in wordless books before moving on to learning basic sounds and simple words as phonics knowledge develops. Next, we introduce the girls to classic picture books – like Funny Bones and The Tiger Who Came to Tea – as well as sharing our love of more recent favourites. By Upper School, the girls are ready to tackle the challenging themes and ideas in Shakespeare’s plays and novels such as Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo and The Middle of Nowhere by Geraldine McCaughrean.
We see the lessons we teach and texts we study within school as an important part of a much wider picture. We want our girls to be able to enjoy books outside school and to embed a desire to read that continues even after a girl’s journey at BPS has finished. Reading for pleasure is a powerful factor in life achievement. We know that if we can get our girls reading voraciously at school and at home, their increased vocabulary, communication skills and knowledge of world can give them a huge advantage over their peers across many different subjects.
It wouldn’t be possible to give the girls this head-start in English without the subject knowledge of our specialist teachers. We are lucky to have talented and enthusiastic teachers of English across all phases of the school. The department also provides ongoing opportunities for continuing professional development to ensure we are providing the very best in English education. We are very much looking forward to meeting the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, at a training event this summer.