What does reading look like in our Nursery?

• Children have access to a wide range of high quality texts from classic stories to non-fiction books. These books are used in all areas of the nursery, indoors and outdoors, to enhance the provision and to allow the children to make links between books and their play interests.

• We create cosy, calm and comfortable areas within the nursery environment for children to look at books independently or share stories together. Within the book corner we have a high quality selection of books for the children to have free access to.

• We listen to stories via different media so the children are encouraged and know that they can listen to a story in a number of different ways, for example on a CD or using the story phones.
• Each day, our children have the opportunity to listen to a story within a small group. Our staff are very highly skilled at reading and sharing stories and use intonation, body language and props to bring the stories to life. Listening to a story is a very special time in our nursery day.
• In nursery, stories and books are often used as a stimulus for planning or used as a ‘hook’ to learning to generate interest. We have a set of core books and stories, which have been carefully selected, that support our planning throughout the year and are developmentally appropriate for the children.
• The Nursery has taken part in the ‘Again’ project in partnership with Seven Stories- National Centre for children’s books. The project focused on the importance and benefits of repeated reading for young children. High quality texts are repeatedly read to the children, to introduce new vocabulary, explore themes and ideas within the book and develop awareness of concepts, such as rhyme and alliteration. Involvement in the project has supported staff’s knowledge and understanding of using books and repeated reading and the importance carefully selected texts and this has now been embedded into our everyday practice within nursery.
• We use books and stories to support children to settle at nursery and as part of our transition processes. We provide the children with a book to welcome them when they start our nursery and use this as a talking point during the settling in process. We also provide children with books to support their understanding of important transitions or changes they may experience, such as leaving nursery to start their new school.
• Families are able to borrow books from our ‘Lending Library’ to take home and share or to look at together before their nursery session begins. We give family members regular ideas and information on effective ways to share stories with our young children and the importance of doing so,  on our nursery Facebook page and Class Dojo.
• We have now introduced an adults section to our ‘Lending Library’, as it is important that children observe their role models enjoying reading too.
• Each week the children are able to borrow a story activity pack containing a book, props to retell the story, activities and possible ideas to extend the learning linked to the story.