n line with our current drive to encourage all students to read for pleasure, widen their vocabulary and develop their literacy skills, on Wednesday of this week we held our first ever whole school DEAR Moment. (DEAR stands for Drop Everything And Read.)

At the end of lesson 5 the school bell rang three short times and at that unannounced signal everyone in the school (all staff and students across the school site) stopped what they were doing and started to read. The DEAR Moment lasted for about 10 minutes and ended by the school bell sounding again for three short rings.

We did this to strongly remind ourselves (in hopefully a fun way) that reading is so important for all of us to build in to our daily lives. As we know reading underpins all our learning and further developing our reading enables us all to achieve our full potential in all subjects and in all walks of life.

Students did seem to really enjoy our school’s first ever DEAR Moment and were prepared for it with their reading books in their bags at the ready. The photo captures the focus in Ms Bowe’s lesson.