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The aim of NET Academies Trust is to promote and lead innovative practice in our schools and classrooms to help raise educational outcomes for all pupils.

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Bedtime Stories

Latton Green Primary Academy want to encourage healthy bedtime routines and a love of reading - and it seems to be working!

 

Once upon a time….Bedtime Stories with Latton Green Primary School

A new initiative at Latton Green Primary School has captured the imagination of our  children and their families as well as national interest. Bedtime Stories with Latton Green –    a live Facetime event – has been launched with children and parents totally immersed in this weekly live streaming of the most popular and voted for story of the week. The response from both parents and children after launch day was phenomenal, on the first screening 72% tuned in to the live event with a total of 86% of the school accessing the story before the next school day.

 

At Latton Green we know the importance of reading within our children’s lives. Research has proven that pupils who read regularly, or are read to, at a young age benefit greatly and this has a positive impact on children’s overall educational performance in their later school years. This is why reading is always at the heart of our school; it is one of our priorities and this year the hard work of pupils, teachers and families has placed us first and the top school in Harlow for reading progress for the last two years.

 

As a school community, we are always looking at how to positively promote reading with our pupils and following a survey with the children on bedtime stories, in which 24% said that they have a regular bedtime story, we looked at ways we could promote the importance of this further. We considered how we could support the busy lives of parents by offering an additional service and sharing our love of reading stories.

 

Sinead McCarthy, Head of School commented: “We knew that we needed to ‘move with the times’ as we know that many children use technology whilst at home in the evenings - our survey showed that 63% of our pupils used it before bedtime. We felt we needed to consider how we could encourage 15 minutes of this time to be used educationally and promoting the love of reading. Our initiative has been a great success so far and we will continue to live stream Bedtime Stories for as long as it works for our pupils and their families.  We always make it clear that our online bedtime story does not replace a real book or family story time and at the end of Bedtime Stories, we encourage families to follow up with their own story before they go to bed. This term we are also including it as part of our homework with children recording their own bedtime stories to share with us.”

 

Jo Coton, NET Trust CEO added: “We are delighted with the benefits that we are seeing for our children at Latton Green and with the positive feedback we have received from their parents. We are currently looking at ways other schools in the Trust can adapt this initiative for their own pupils and in the meantime Latton Green have invited pupils and families in our other schools to tune in.”