Today, all four schools across the Galaxy Trust have launched a new reading project: The Galaxy 100. Its aim is to promote reading for pleasure amongst our children and families.

The Galaxy 100 is a list of books that we would like all children to have read, listened to or shared with others before they leave Year 6. There are 25 books for each phase that have been carefully nominated and selected by members of staff across the Trust and include a diverse range of characters, themes and genres – we are confident there is something for everyone!

We will have some copies of each of the books in school for children to borrow, as well as building up a bank of other formats of the titles, such as audio books and books in large print to ensure that the list is accessible to everyone.

As children finish a book from the list, they should upload a picture of them reading the book to their Class Dojo portfolio and record the title in their reading record book. The class teacher will then tick off the title on a record sheet, which will get passed up to your child’s next teacher at the end of each academic year.

Children can earn certificates for completing all titles in their phase as well as completing the entire list of 100 books. For those children who are currently in KS2, we will focus on the Galaxy 50, which will be the list of books for LKS2 and UKS2. There will also be other activities, events and competitions throughout the year. Each school have also selected reading ambassadors to help promote reading for pleasure across the Trust. Our first competition, that we launched today, is to design a logo for The Galaxy 100, that we can use on any future correspondence about the project. Any completed entries should be given to your child’s class teacher by Wednesday 13th October.

Some of the Galaxy 100 books will be on Accelerated Reader and for those titles, children will be able to complete an AR quiz. We are aware that some of these books will be outside of your child’s ZPD but this should not stop them from experiencing them. They will still be able to complete the quizzes.

We are really looking forward to this project and sharing some of the books that we feel are not to be missed!