Building a Culture of Reading at Halcyon: Why It Matters for Your Child

We are launching a whole-school initiative for 2025-26 ‘Halcyon Reads!’ where all students will engage in weekly sustained reading to build a community of learners who share ideas, discuss perspectives, and develop critical thinking together. 

How does a thriving reading culture support students?

• The Academic and Cognitive Benefits: Students who read frequently show enhanced cognitive function and better problem-solving skills throughout their academic careers by improving vocabulary acquisition, writing skills, and critical thinking abilities that transfer to every area of learning.  (Sullivan and Brown).
• Mental Health and Wellbeing: Reading fiction, particularly helps students display heightened cultural awareness, greater empathy and social cognition, and more self awareness, while also supporting conversation and connection among peers (Kidd & Castano; Billington et. al.)

Our Commitment

Next academic year we will be utilising our coaching hour for reading for pleasure. Students will attend their coaching appointment as usual, however, they will remain at school until 4pm, engaging in sustained reading practice.  By dedicating time to reading for pleasure at Halcyon, we are fostering habits that will serve our students throughout their lives. While we embrace technology for many educational purposes, we've chosen to dedicate this reading time to physical books to maximise the benefits of sustained, focused reading without the distractions that our devices sometimes enable. To support this, additional physical books have been purchased in consultation with our student body. Our digital collection on Sora will continue as part of our library provision to support further inquiry and curiosity.

Our intention is to create space for the kind of deep, reflective engagement with texts that builds both intellectual capacity and emotional resilience, while strengthening our school community through shared literary experiences. These literary experiences include curriculum engagements, World Book Day, Book Clubs, Library Representatives and the recent Book Fair.