Reading at S.M.I.T.H
At St. Michael in the Hamlet Primary School we are passionate about reading! We work hard to develop a rich reading culture so that every child discovers a love of reading that will stay will them throughout their lives. We have lots of different ways of promoting reading in every area of school life, for example –
- The Playground Reading Shed
- Family learning events
- Lunch time book club
- The Reading Challenge
- The Read for Good Readathon
- Lending Library
- Home reading challenges
Each year group uses high quality texts as part of a diverse book spine, which enables the children to experience a multitude of genres.
Each class has an inviting reading area and we have our own school library: children can access both of these at various times during the week.
World Book Day 2026
We had a brilliant day celebrating reading and all things book related! Our families and staff made such a great effort as you can see from the pictures.
We launched a competition to celebrate this year’s World Book Day. The children were asked to create a ‘Story Spoon’ – We had over 100 entries and they were all so creative and unique! The school council judged the competition; you can see see the lucky winners below!
We also ran a competition for our staff – ‘Extreme Reading’ we had some fantastic entries from our staff team but the children got the final say and voted Ms Knutsen and Ms Bower as their top favourites!
Every class used the text ‘The Bear and the Piano’ as part of their English and foundation lessons. The children loved it and produced some brilliant work!
Library Club
At SMITH our brilliant librarians help to run a reading club every week in the library on a Tuesday from 3:15 – 4. All school families are welcome to attend – we have books for you to borrow suitable for all ages!
Here are our librarians giving you a tour!
PRIMARY_national_curriculum English
Pathways – reading and spoken language overview
The following documents show progression in reading across the school, describing what a child should be able to do to reach age related expectations at the end of each year group.
Lots of our children and families took part in the Read for Good readathon, raising money to provide books and storytellers for children in hospital by doing sponsored reads. We are very proud to say they raised over £1000!
