Taylor Road Reading Spine

What is the purpose of our Reading Spine? 

We want our school to be a place where children are read to, enjoy, discuss and work with high quality books.

These ‘essential reads’ will be a store of classics that every child in that year is exposed to, either through independent or shared whole class reading, with the purpose of  creating a’ living library’ inside each child’s mind. 

The high-quality core fiction texts for each year are from the  Pie Corbett reading spine . In addition to these quality reads, we have also provided core non-fiction books linked to our topic themes , core poetry and diverse/PHSE themed texts. 

‘Children who are good at reading do more of it: they learn more, about all sorts of things, and their expanded vocabulary, gained from their reading, increases their ease of access to more reading.’

‘Conversely, those for whom reading is difficult fall behind, not just in their reading but in all subjects and a vicious circle develops.’

‘Teaching pupils to read as well as possible produces advantages for the individual. Without reading, it is much more difficult to access written information, on paper or online. Those who cannot read are also excluded from most social media.

Crucially, being unable to read significantly narrows the range of work and life opportunities a person can access.’

(DfE updated Reading Framework 11th July 2023)