Reading

Engaging in reading for enjoyment offers numerous advantages in nurturing students’ growth. It enhances empathy, fosters better interpersonal connections, supports good mental health, and contributes to lifelong well-being.

Research shows the following:

The significance of reading for pleasure extends beyond personal development to include educational benefits.
There is a positive correlation between positive attitudes towards reading and achieving high scores on assessments rooted in reading comprehension.
Reading for pleasure yields emotional and social outcomes.

Reading is at the heart of all we do at Stepney All Saints: the fundamental skill on which success across subject disciplines is built. A love of reading will stay forever once fostered.

At Stepney All Saints (SASS), our priorities for reading are:

Reading for pleasure
High quality literacy intervention

When learning with us, students strive to break through their literacy misconceptions and become confident, resilient, enthusiastic readers.

Reading for pleasure

The SASS CANON

At school we have identified the body of books which we expect every student to read whilst a student in years 7, 8 & 9. This is called the SASS canon. These books are:

Year 7

Frankie’s World by Aoife Dooley
When Secrets Set Sail by Sita Brahmachari
You Are Awesome by Matthew Syed
When Life Gives you Mangos by Kereen Getten
Rhythm and Poetry by Karl Nova
Horrible Histories: The Groovy Greeks by Terry Deary and Martin Brown
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
The Stuff of Nightmares by Malorie Blackman

Download a guide to the Year 7 canon here – YEAR 7 CANON.

Year 8

Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens
Love in Winter Wonderland by Abiola Bello
Clap when you Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
She Wore Red Trainers by Na’ima B Robert
Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Children of Blood and Bone by TomiAdeyem
Sawbones by Catherine Johnson
That Asian Kid by Savita Kalhan
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Download a guide to the Year 8 canon here – YEAR 8 CANON.

Year 9

This Book Kills by Ravena Guro
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
Let’s Play Murder by Kesia Lupo
Thief by Malorie Blackman
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
You Must be Layla by Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Download a guide to the Year 9 canon here – YEAR 9 CANON.

The Library

The library is located in the heart of the school and the biggest school library in London. It is divided into the Main Library, housing our extensive catalogue of fiction texts, and the Reference Library, an area for independent study and revision.

The library is open before and after school, as well as during break and lunchtime.

Click HERE for a virtual tour of our library.

Ensuring progress

It is incredibly important that all students can read at least in line with what is expected of them nationally.

We call this ‘age relate expectation’. We recognise that as a student gets older their reading age must increase in line. Therefore, students must read for 20 minutes per day as a minimum.

Accelerated Reader

All students in Ks3 are enrolled in Accelerated Reader. Accelerated Reader is an online platform that helps students choose appropriate books to read, tracks their reading journey and helps teachers support students reading. Students can follow the link below to get book recommendations and to complete quizzes on the books they have read.

https://ukhosted38.renlearn.co.uk/1893941

A Parents Guide to Accelerated Reader can be viewed here.

How can I encourage my child to read?

Reading is an important skill that all parents need to encourage their children to master. A person who can read well is more likely to:

Succeed in education;
get a higher paying job or have a wider range of jobs open to them;
experience the joys of learning new things;
enjoy the stress-reducing entertainment of a good book.

While it can be harder to turn a teenager on to reading than say a 3-year-old who loves the attention you give when you read them a book, it is not anywhere near impossible. Here are a few tried and tested tactics you can use to turn your child into an avid reader.

Read for enjoyment.

The more you model the behaviour you want your child to do, the more likely they are to pick up the behaviour. If you show your child that reading can be as fun as watching television, instead of just saying it, he/she will be apt to believe it and quite possibly try it. This is especially important for boys: if they see male role models reading, they are much more likely to read themselves.

Have books that interest your child available.

If there are no books that your child is interested in reading in your home, then your child has no choices available to him/her. Visit the local book fair or second-hand bookshop and stock up. Start off with books that are a similar genre to the kind of films, TV programmes and games that your child enjoys!

Purchase magazines about his/her interest.

Magazine articles are short and fun to read for children, and yet, this is still reading. Buying a magazine regularly will ensure that your child has something new to read and will encourage them to branch out for more reading fun.

Play audio books at home.

While this isn’t exactly reading – it is enjoying a book. Your child may not know what it’s like to enjoy a story, which is one of the most important reasons to read. Buy an audio book that is part of a series. Then your child can read the rest of the series. Many apps and websites provide access to free books.

Spend some quality time at a good book shop.

Sometimes young people, even those who are as old as your child, just like having your attention. Visit the bookshop together, and encourage them to choose a book: it doesn’t have to be fiction – autobiographies and other non-fiction books are just as valid for reading as a novel. Remember that the staff in good bookshops are avid readers themselves and will be able to recommend suitable books.

Find out from your child’s English teacher what they are reading in class.

Encourage your child to continue to read the same book independently at home.

Tower Hamlets School Library Service

We are pleased to announce that students can now access the Tower Hamlets e-book library for all their reading needs.

The website is: https://towerhamlets-sls.wheelers.co/

Details of how to log in can be found on Google Classroom.

This is a fantastic resource that gives students access to many brand new books. It has an app for tablets also, so books can be downloaded onto tablets, kindles and computers.

For students in Years 7, 8 and 9 they can also check the reading age of the books they are reading to help with their Accelerated Reader score.