We encourage children to be responsible in their choice of appropriate materials by using the five-finger rule in their book selection process to ensure a successful and enjoyable reading experience.
Five-Finger Rule
Beginning readers can use the five-finger test to check the reading level of a book:
Open the book you are considering reading, preferably in the middle. Select a full page of text.
Read the page (aloud if possible.) Put one finger up for every word you cannot pronounce or do not know. If you have five (5) fingers up on one page, the book is too difficult to read
independently. If you don’t have any fingers up, but are reading very slowly and decoding almost every word, you will not enjoy this book.
If you need a suggestion for a book that you can read, ask either myself or seek adult assistance in the room.
The students have experienced and enjoyed literature through listening and responding to the following books by Anthony Browne:
Zoo Piggy book My Mom My Dad Into the Forest

Anthony Browne is one of the most popular and stylistically distinctive children’s book artists, with a number of outstanding titles to his credit including "Gorilla" and "The Tunnel". Anthony grew up in a village called Hipperholme, in Yorkshire. He loved art and would spend hours drawing with his father. After he left school, Anthony studied graphic design and then went on to paint the insides of people's bodies for medical textbooks. He found this fascinating, but after three years found that the work was becoming repetitive and instead began designing greetings cards. This in turn led him to illustrating children's books - his book "Gorilla" began life as a picture on a birthday card. Anthony lives in Kent and has two grown-up children. Anthony has won many prizes for his work, including the Kate Greenaway Medal (twice) and the Kurt Maschler Award (three times). In 2000, he received the highest international honour for illustration, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, for his services to children's literature - the first British illustrator to win the prize since 1956. He has also been announced as the 2009-2011 Children's Laureate, which is an enormous honour, but mostly a testament to his body of work.