Westhoughton High School turns form time into reading session

And one secondary school in Bolton is transforming morning form time into an enjoyable reading session.

The benefits of reading are far-reaching, from pleasure to educational and personal development.

Now, similar to Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, albeit in the morning, Westhoughton High School children will enjoy listening to a story read aloud, in this case by the form tutor from September this year.

Jen Paradine, assistant head teacher and who leads reading at the school, said: “The reading programme is a form tutor reading programme.

“The vision is that everybody within the school will be involved including the site team, the cleaners, the office staff, during that 20 minutes.

“We really want that to start the day off really positively and it is offering a real good start to the day.

“For those children who don’t particularly like reading, everyone likes a story, so everyone will enjoy listening to a story.

“The children will track their reading using our new reading rulers, so it is a big investment for the school, but we understand and see the benefits of improving reading.

“At school we approach it in three ways.

"We have got learning to read so we have got lots of reading interventions to improve children’s reading abilities, then we have got reading to learn so we look at reading across the curriculum, how children are reading to improve their knowledge and understanding and then reading for leisure and pleasure so this will go into their reading for leisure and pleasure.

“We have got 12 different books for Years Seven and Eight, 12 different books for Years Nine and 10, and the aspiration is that all children will have at least six fiction books read to them each year.

Mrs Paradine said: “It is absolutely vital that young people are exposed to reading, it can be magic, they can take themselves and transport themselves into a completely different place when reading fiction, but then again can access learning through reading.

“It is imperative that we build that confidence so that reading is not a barrier to their learning in the future.

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“This came about after lots of research into reading, unfortunately a lot of children from primary school leave with below expected standard of reading, reading opens the door to everything, it is a foundation of everything in life, reading is everywhere.

“We want to improve our children’s life chances by being able to read and we think that if we can get them reading for pleasure and leisure through this period of time in the morning, it will encourage them then to do a bit more reading for their learning.

“And for those who are struggling to read, this means they are still getting exposed to all that vocabulary, and they are hearing it.

“With our ethos, never stop learning, this initiative is just going to give a really strong message every day.”

Mrs Paradine said there will be a range of books so there is something for every pupil to enjoy.

She said: “This won’t be another English lesson, we won't have the stopping and starting or asking what do you think, we really want to focus on the children being read to.

“We have got a variety of different fiction books including thrillers, romances, and we have taken a long time to consider the books we think our learners will be intrigued by.

“In the future as the programme grows we would like to involve the children in which books we purchase next.”

For the new reading programme, the school is in need of class sets of books and is hoping local businesses can help out.

Mrs Paradine said: “We have been thinking about getting local businesses involved too.

“Each class set of books, purchasing 31 books, works out at just under £200 for a class set and we are going to have to buy 28 sets of class books, so it is a massive investment, and we want local businesses to see the importance of reading and hopefully support us and come forward and sponsor a set of books.

“We will then support them on our website and social media and there will be a display in our reception area of our reading sponsors.”

If anyone would like to get involved and sponsor, contact Jen at JParadine@westhoughton-high.org.

If you have a story or something you would like to highlight in the community, please email me at chloe.wilson@newsquest.co.uk or DM me on X @chloewjourno.