Doncaster youngsters race ahead in the reading stakes

Young readers from a Doncaster school beat others from across South and West Yorkshire in a One Million Minutes challenge.
Bentley New Village Primary young readersBentley New Village Primary young readers
Bentley New Village Primary young readers

South Yorkshire saw 64 classes register from 11 schools, involving 1,920 children. Winners New Village Elm from Bentley New Village Primary School read for an impressive 23,597 minutes.

The whole of South Yorkshire managed to read for a total 220,820 minutes as part of the year long campaign to encourage primary age children to read, run by the charity Achievement for All.

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Vicky Simmons, teacher of the winning class at Bentley New Village Primary, said: “This competition has been amazing, I couldn’t stop the children reading. Every time we stopped a task the books were opened. Children took their books to break and lunch.

“Parents told us they thought their children would sleep with their books! The children were obsessive about counting every minute.”

Leo, Year three pupil, said: “I have loved this competition, it made me want to read.”

Nikola, year four, added: “I read for seven hours over the weekend and completed a very large book, it has been brilliant I loved it.”

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Brandon, also in year four, said: “I loved to see the total going up each morning. Miss counted our minutes from the bookmarks. We added them up and put them on the computer. Miss would check back every so often. We got very excited.”