“When we introduced the books to the children, their eyes lit up!”

This year, Bookmark was awarded some funding to help schools to re-invigorate their libraries and reading spaces with a donation of books and resources. We piloted this project in two areas that have a high-level of need for literacy support Birmingham and Lincolnshire.  

We spoke to Jessica Lees, Reading Lead at Bracebridge Infant and Nursery School to understand the impact this donation has had on her pupils and school.

Lincolnshire stands out as being amongst the most deprived 10% of areas in England and the city of Lincoln has the highest literacy need within the county. Jessica Lees says that this is something that people don’t always realise. Jessica said:

“The percentage of readers in Lincoln who are below the expected standard for reading is one of the highest in the country. When I joined the school two years ago, the number of children with reading levels at the expected standard was very, very low. We have 17 languages in our school, we have lots of children with English as an additional language and we have lots of children who are recipients of pupil premium. We have those children who are just about managing, and we have lots of children who aren’t. We also have a lot of parents who can’t read or write themselves, or who don’t speak English. They are the sort of challenges we’re facing when it comes to reading.”

Jessica and her colleague’s mission is that every child leaves their school a reader.

“Children need to leave our school as fluent readers and they need to leave enjoying reading, otherwise they won’t continue.” They are also keen to develop their library area, which is an add on to their hall. We’re applying for grants to make the library look appealing, because if the library looks appealing, children will want to come and choose books to read.”

To help the Bracebridge team achieve this, they applied for a Bookmark Your Story Corner pack. The pack has been designed to encourage a Whole School Reading Culture, and includes: 200 new books, an annual subscription to The Story Corner magazine for 5–9-year-olds, posters, postcards, worksheets, and a certificate to help encourage reading for pleasure as well as access to a whole host of other intervention apps.

Jessica said:

“When we introduced the books to the children their eyes lit up! They loved that they were new, rather than old and scruffy. We were telling them to smell them because they smelt new! They loved that.”

“Opening the boxes of books for us as teachers was like Christmas. We spent hours going through them and we had plenty of other things that we had to be doing. We were all late going home that day because we were mesmerised and having conversations like “which one are you going to work with first?” It’s easy for teachers to get stuck working with their favourite books, like your Julia Donaldson’s etc. These books really opened our eyes to what’s out there.”

The books and resources have already been put to good use.

The new books have been incorporated into a reading initiative Bracebridge already had in place, their ‘Favourite Five’. Every week the children vote for their favourite book out of five and the lowest ranking book is swapped out for a new one which the children can read in class. Each class also has five of the new books in their class and are reading them together.

The books have also been used to create a display in the school’s library area. When they were unpacking the boxes, Jessica and the team noticed that lots of the topics on the books fell into the protected characteristic categories like race, religion, and sexual orientation.

“We’ve created a display in the hallway about the characteristics using the books to describe them. Then every Thursday we have an assembly about one of the characteristics and we use one of the books to bring it to life. For instance, last week, we we’re talking about disabilities, and we used one of the books called Splash, which has been written by a Paralympian. We talked about what you can achieve, even when you have some hurdles to overcome.”

“There were lots of books around what women have achieved as well, like Katherine Johnson the mathematician who worked on the moon landing. We want to fill children with ambition, for instance if you want to go to space, you can go to space! The books were inspirational and aspirational.”

“We’re using the books as a teaching tool for a basis for life and talking about the things that really matter. We want the children to understand that if a new child came to our school with a disability, or with two mums, or from a different country that they’re welcome. We use the phrase ‘all are welcome here’ and these books are really helping to support that. I wanted to say a big thank you to Bookmark for the books, they’re making a real difference to our school.”