Love of Reading

A love reading is embedded throughout school life; we regularly share stories and reading opportunities with our children. We celebrate a number of Reading themed days, such as World Book day and National poetry day, alongside our own Great Park Super Learning Days.

Students visit the local public library regularly and we invite authors and inspiring guests into school annually. We value the role challenging texts have on our growth, not just academically, but personally and students are encouraged to take time reading books from our new ‘Personal Development’ section. We link our learning to text poetry wherever possible and there is an abundance of opportunities for pupils to memorise, perform and create their own poems and scripts.

This page will be updated throughout the year with our Love of Reading events and Super Learning Days. Below you can read information about our '50 Books Before KS3' challenge and a summary of reading at Great Park Academy.

Our 50 Book Challenge

Our '50 books before Key Stage 3' challenge provides children with a wide selection of genres and themes, rewarding their participation. After every book read, pupils receive a sticker and after 10 books read, they receive a personalised badge. We believe independent reading is a crucial time where children can get lost in a book and enrich their passion for reading. We hope you can support your child with this exciting at home.

50 Books Challenge Reading List

50 Books Challenge Reading List

Reading at Great Park Academy

Reading at Great Park Academy

World Book Day

On Thursday 7th March 2024, we celebrated World Book Day. The children took part in a range of activities inspired by our ’50 book challenge’. Students concocted their own Harry Potter magical potions; put their detective hats on and work together to unravel the clues with the London Eye Mystery; created their own Greek gods and enjoyed delicious fruit skewers at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

We were also blown away by the incredible entries we received for the Book Bake Off. The level of creativity and attention to detail displayed by our young bakers truly impressed us.

To top it all off, we couldn't resist having a Masked Reader competition. The children thoroughly enjoyed trying to guess the readers' identities before the grand reveal.

Celebrating Writing

Year 5 and 6 celebrated writing, during one of our signature ‘Super Learning Days’. Year 5 were inspired by a short animation, called ‘Broken’. This was a twisted tale built on the childhood game ‘Rock, Paper, scissors’. Pupils worked in teams to build character descriptions, using unusual vocabulary. Working with adults, they developed their knowledge of speech, in narrative writing, acting out scenes before picking up their pen. Year 6 followed their Autumn theme - War and conflict. Students studied life in the trenches and wrote a powerful setting description for ‘The Christmas Truce’ advert, by Sainsbury’s. The language used by all students was inspiring and had the year 5 pupils on the edge of their seats, when writing was shared in our celebration assembly. The students’ narratives then included an emotional flashback, which brought tears to many eyes!

Author Visit

We were lucky to host two new and upcoming authors, Alexandra Hart and Phoebe Sleeman. It was such an exciting and refreshing visit; both are new and young authors who have written their first book aimed at 9-12 year olds. Their book, ‘Alight’, has already caught the attention of many and the visit to school was organised alongside Gosforth Public Library. It was not only exciting to be one of the first for a Q & A session but many children purchased a signed copy of the book for themselves. The visit was a great inspiration to all our pupils, where they could speak to young writers early in their writing career. As a result, we now have a number of budding authors in school, who are starting to write their own group novels at breaks and out of school. We are very pleased that the visit had this impact and are excited to hear the finished pieces.

National Poetry Day at Great Park Academy

National Poetry Day Competition

As a school we held an Autumn poetry competition to celebrate National Poetry Day. The National Literacy Trust labelled this year’s theme- ‘Poetry with nature’. Students thought about animals, plants and even activities we complete in nature: using these as inspiration for a short poem. We had a huge range: rhyming poems, short limericks and many free write, narrative poems. We had 4 winners from both year 5 and year 6, who enjoyed a certificate and writing prize. Well done to all who entered and we look forward to next year’s entries.

The Importance of Reading

In September we hosted our first ‘Super Learning Day’ of the academic year. The focus was on the skills we gain from reading. Pupils travelled around the school, visiting different teachers with different skills to explore. Sessions included fun interactive games, quizzes and debates based around the following themes: reading improves spelling, reading improves vocabulary, reading improves confidence, reading improves our understanding of the world and reading improves imagination. Games and quizzes included a grapheme spaghetti challenge, synonym bingo, Frayer models and ‘Don’t say it’ games. Other sessions included current affairs pupil debates, acting out poems and character creation. The day ended by celebrating the day’s achievements and awards were given for most progress, great teamwork and enthusiasm towards tasks.

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