“Imagine a school where children enjoy, discuss and work with a core books, both fiction and poetry. These ‘essential reads’ would be a store of classics, creating a living library inside a child’s mind. This is the Reading Spine. As a school we want to build a common bank of stories that bind the community together. These are shared and deeply imagined common experiences.” 

We want our school to be a place where children are read to, enjoy, discuss and work with high quality books. These ‘essential reads’ would be a store of classics, creating a living library inside a child’s mind. This is the ‘Reading Spine’. 

Our 'Reading Spine' is one element of the approach we take to foster a love for reading in our children. The spine is a core of books that create a living library inside our children's minds.  It is a store of classics and essential reads that help our children engage at a deeper level and enter the world of the story.  We have produced our very own 'Reading Spine' for every year group; giving children access to these high-quality texts.

Pie Corbett says…

Great books build the imagination. The more we read aloud expressively, and the more children are able to savour, discuss and reinterpret literature through the arts, the more memorable the characters, places and events become, building an inner world. A child who is read to will have an inner kingdom of unicorns, talking spiders and a knife that cuts into other worlds. The mind is like a ‘tardis’; it may seem small but inside there are many mansions. Each great book develops the imagination and equips the reader with language.

Great stories speak to us as individuals and some children will return to certain books again and again. Great stories also build our language because around 75 per cent of our vocabulary comes from our reading. Reading develops the ability to think in the abstract; to follow lines of thought. Schools that have a reading spine, build a common bank of stories that bind the community together. These are shared and deeply imagined common experiences.