On 26th February 2019, staff and pupils at Carron PS held their second highly successful “Read around the camp fire” event. Yvonne McBlain thoroughly enjoyed popping in and being part of this rather magical experience.
For pupils, the evening consisted of coming back to school in the dark and getting comfy around their very own camp fire with their classmates while being read to by their teacher. As can be seen from the photos, pupils snuggled, reclined and were mesmerised by the tales told – teachers modelling excellent story-telling and thoroughly engaging their audience.
For parents, there was an initial information session sharing the educational reasons for hosting this kind of event – enabling them to understand how it assists the school’s ongoing aim to improve pupils reading skills. Primary 7 class teachers Kayleigh Docherty and Linsey Archibald led this session, explaining how their initiative was inspired by the research findings of Sue Ellis – that encouraging children to develop a love of reading was key to closing the attainment gap. Read more about this research by clicking here.
The journey towards encouraging this love of reading has so far included a Harry Potter night with themed activities, being shortlisted for an award for their First Minister’s Reading Challenge video (click here to view), and generally inspiring pupils who previously were disinterested in reading to become passionate readers who love even the sight of new books!
From the pupil consultation which they ensured was part of this development process, Kayleigh and Linsey increased the variety and number of books available to pupils, as well as building more dedicated reading time into their curriculum. They worked with our service librarian and Learning Resource Service to create library areas in each classroom and instigated a reading buddies programme across the school. There is now a very successful and popular Tuesday lunchtime reading club which pupils think is “so much fun”, in addition to the numerous events planned across the school year to encourage and celebrate reading.
Linsey and Kayleigh shared the results of their pupil/parent survey to demonstrate their impact on enjoyment of reading – 75% of pupils reported an improvement of school encouragement to read, there was a 13% increase in the amount of reading time by pupils each day, and 69% of parents feel their child enjoys reading at home – this represents a 14% increase from last session. Despite all of this, Linsey and Kayleigh feel they still have lots they would like to do including the creation of indoor and outdoor spaces to read, and a community library based in their school. There are also plans for further work with our service librarian, a new China reading challenge, book swap shops, quizzes and other fun events.
Following this presentation, parents moved outdoors to join their children for the reading around the camp fire – collecting hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows en route! The children were obviously engrossed in the stories being read to them, and Yvonne thoroughly enjoyed wandering between camp fires catching snippets of stories and absorbing the unusually buzzing atmosphere of a busy school playground at night.
