Ark Conway was filled for a day with superheroes, animals, wizards and many more for World Book Day this year, an exicting event which everyone looked forward to.

We celebrated our love of reading by not only dressing up but with book swaps, teacher swaps, reading in tents with children from different classes and creating a fantastic whole school story, with every class contributing to a story that was presented in Celebration Assembly.

The Parents were involved too and the Parents' Forum generously donated funds towards new book hampers for each class: from superman stories to horrible histories. We also had a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Cake made for us by another of the talented parents! The children particularly enjoyed being read to by volunteering parents.

One initiative was particularly successful, 'Drop Everything and Read', where everybody in the school (including teachers) reads for ten minutes uninterrupted every day.

Last week, Ark Conway was praised in 'Reading: the next steps', a report by the Department of Education which sets out evidence on the importance of reading and progress being made across the country. We were highlighted as an example of a school successfully improving literacy and achieving results. Pupils at Ark Conway achieved an incredible:

• 100% pass rate in the phonics screening check at the end of Year 1 - the national average is 74%
• Joint first in the entire country for reading - 93% of pupls achieved the highest test levels by the age of 7.

These fantastic results have been achieved through a whole school focus on literacy and the use of Read Write Inc., an innovative programme to teach phonics where pupils learn the combinations of letters which make all the different sounds, and how to combine these sounds to make words.

Richard Welsh, Phonics Lead said:

"I'm incredibly proud of what the team have achieved in both results and creating brilliant lessons that have enthused all the children to making such amazing progress. Seeing the children progress so quickly and gaining confidence in their reading has made the role all the more worthwhile."

Zaia, a Year 1 pupil, said:

"I like reading at school and phonics lessons because we get to write interesting letters and do some interesting writing. I like reading and I'm getting better and better. I loved the book Jade's Party because she got the wrong boy and ended up with a jumbo pack of nappies!"

 

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