A BRADFORD primary school will take part in a renewed push to get more children reading for pleasure.

St Matthew’s CE Primary School is holding a number of events over the coming months to turn their pupils into miniature bookworms.

The aim is to get more children to read more at school and home, and this includes looking at ways to make it easier for parents to read with their children.

The Mayo Avenue school has introduced a reading programme involving all 426 pupils, from Nursery through to Year 6.

It encourages them to read for 10 minutes every day. The more reading they do, the further round the world they travel on a “Reading Miles Passport” given to each child to fill in.

The younger children will have a story read to them while others will read one from the books on offer in school.

Pupils who complete the four journeys on the passport will be entered into a draw to win an e-reader in a lucky dip, providing pupils with the motivation to read as many books as they can.

Each class in the school has also been given a budget to improve their book corner, with children having plenty of involvement on how the money should be spent.

The school’s library was recently opened to parents, who can borrow school books with their children to read at home.

The school has also recently set up a bookstall to provide reduced price books, making it easier for families to provide their children with books to read outside school hours.

A lucky dip for the e-reader was made on Friday by children’s author Stephen Davies.

He was the third author to visit the school in recent months.

Mr Davies spoke to pupils about the characters in his books at an all school assembly, and then took part in a workshop with Year 1, focussing on his book Don’t Spill The Milk and a workshop with Year 5 based around character development.

He is the latest children’s author to come to the school to inspire pupils to read and write more in the past year.

In April, Tom Palmer visited St Matthew’s where he talked with pupils about a story he who wrote for the Euro 2016 football tournament, which also coincided with the start of commemorating the Battle of the Somme. The pupils were then invited to carry on reading the story online.

And in December children’s illustrator and author Simon Murray visited to inspire pupils to read more and create their own artworks.

Teachers are also helping inspire their students by reading stories to the school on a video posted on the school website.

The first is a reading by acting head teacher Kay Remmer of A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen, the bestseller that was recently made into a film.

Mrs Remmer said: “Reading is so important, we have developed a wide range of activities and opportunities to encourage reading in school and at home this year.

“Parents are becoming increasingly keen to read with their children and opening up the school library and providing a low-cost book stall is helping with this.

“We hope these measures will bring about a love of reading and help the children make significant progress in their reading outcomes.”

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