“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands” - Neil Gaiman

This week we have been celebrating books and the love of reading. According to research from University College London reading for pleasure is more important for children's cognitive development than their parents' level of education and is a more powerful factor in life achievement than socio-economic background and there is a difference in reading performance equivalent to just over a year's schooling between young people who never read for enjoyment and those who read for up to 30 minutes per day. Children who read books often at age 10 and more than once a week at age 16 gain higher results in maths, vocabulary and spelling tests at age 16 than those who read less regularly. In order to encourage reading we took key stage 3 students to read to primary students, teachers read a poem to the whole of secondary school, we had a competition for extreme reading and a movie trailer of a book and we all sat together and read. One of my favourite writers, Neil Gaiman once said “A book is a dream that you hold in your hands” so we encourage you to go out pick up some dreams and read.

Charlotte Evans, Subject leader for English