Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Read For My School

Free e-books for our children

We are delighted to let you know that our school is taking part in Read for My School, the brand new national schools reading competition from 21 January to 22 March 2013.

Long term studies show that children who read for pleasure are significantly more likely as adults to be in continued employment, own their own home, be IT literate, trust others in their community and vote. Read for My School enables all primary schools in England that have access to the internet to enter into a free, secure digital literacy competition that promotes and encourages reading for pleasure and rewards participants with the opportunity to win prizes for themselves and their school by reading books and then recording their progress online.

All of our pupils in years 5 and 6 will be taking part in this fun, free competition that will challenge them to read as many books as they can over the two month period. We will assist pupils with signing up to the competition website, which is a safe and secure environment that complies with child protection laws, and progressing through the programme. However, parents and carers should also support their children by encouraging them to spend time reading at home and talking to them about the books they’ve chosen, as well as providing them with access to a computer so they can read the free online books (if possible) and/or helping them to find suitable books in your local library or bookshop.

The competition is being run by The Pearson Foundation and Booktrust—organisations that are both committed to improving literacy and creating brighter futures for children of all backgrounds. The programme also has support from the Department for Education,

All children and schools who take part in the programme are eligible to win prizes drawn from a pot of 100,000 books kindly donated by Pearson, Penguin and DK.

If you would like further information, including all list of Recommended Reads for the competition, please visit the Read for My School website at  www.readformyschool.co.uk

Once you are logged into the website, you first task is to pick the category that you would like to read your first book from. There are eight to choose from:

Historical Hits – tales to take you back in time
It’s a Mystery – thrillers, whodunits and spooky stories
Keep it Real – books to fill your brain with facts
Laugh out Loud – rip-roaringly funny reads
Out of this World – titles with a touch of sci-fi, fantasy or magic
Stars of theScreen – books featuring characters from film and TV
Thrill Seekers – amazing adventure stories
Wild Thing – tales of animal antics



If you would like further information, including al list of Recommended Reads for the competition, please visit the Read for My School website at www.readformyschool.co.uk.

Win a prize!
Everyone who takes part in Read for My School will be awarded a certificate. There will also be two special certificates for the pupil in your school who reads the most books and the pupil who writes the best answers to the questions on the website. If you win these awards, your teacher might also decide to put you forward for regional and national awards, where you will compete against pupils from up and down the country for fantastic prizes, which will be announced soon! There’s also a pot of 100,000 books up for grabs, and your school could be in with a chance of winning some of them.