Balmuildy Primary School Reading Committee
At Balmuildy Primary we pride ourselves on building a strong culture of reading. Research shows that reading for pleasure supports well-being, has a positive impact on attainment and encourages critical thinking, creativity and resilience. Improving attainment in reading is a key priority and focus of our School Improvement Plan. To help us achieve this goal we have been working with Reading Schools Scotland and in 23/24 were delighted to achieve the Core Accreditation. Our goal in 24/25 is to achieve Silver accreditation. The pupil Reading Committee are invaluable in helping us work towards this.
Our reading committee has 14 pupil members – one from each class in the school. There are also 6 members of staff on the committee. All pupils were invited to complete an application form explaining why they wanted to join and the committee was selected from this.
The committee meets regularly to share ideas on how to achieve the following aims.
· To encourage everyone to read
· To make reading enjoyable for everyone
· To help pupils to improve their reading skills
· To ensure a variety of different types of reading materials available and accessible – such as graphic novels or e-books.
The committee take part in various activities to support these aims. For example, creating posters to be displayed in each classroom to raise awareness of the committee and the work it does, applying for charity money to buy new books and materials for class libraries and reading areas, presenting the Reading Assembly at the end of book week Scotland, being a reading role model both in class and across the school and many more.
Our committee are enthusiastic, engaged and hard-working and we are sure they will be successful in their efforts.