Glenthorne High School Library. The Reading Offer…What choices are you giving children? Twitter is great for making you stop and think sometimes. Yesterday Rob Smith (Literacy shed supremo) posted a tweet that really struck a chord with me. It made me stop and think about reading and what we offer children in our school. Do we offer a gruel or a gourmet reading experience for our pupils. I found myself time-travelling back to my youth and thinking about what made me a reader. I would spend hours poring over the one book that I owned, given to me by my Aunty Pat for Christmas in 1979 or maybe 1980. First question should be “What the hell were you doing Aunty Pat?”
It was a brilliant non-fiction book (I appreciate now that there is quite a lot of fiction in this book)…endlessly re-readable, loads and loads to learn about. It was only replaced when my Dad came home with a set of battered Encyclopaedia Britannica, they then became my go to books for exploring and finding stuff out. This made me stop and think about two things really. Is it controlled? Purposes for Reading. Schools should have dedicated ‘reading time’ that encourages eclectic choices. The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) results have been celebrated as a turning point for literacy attainment in England and hailed by the government and parts of the media as a victory for phonics.
This is a marked change from the recent Programme for International Student Assessment rankings that exposed some of the stubborn challenges we were facing. Can this improvement really be solely attributed to phonics? The Pirls test examines how pupils read, comprehend and interpret information. Other factors, such as dedicated reading time in schools and appropriate reading challenge of books, have been shown in our research to facilitate better comprehension skills. But that’s not to say, as a nation, we’re now set to be propelled up the global rankings. The truth is we still have further to go. Despite an improvement in standards, it is still only a modest improvement. Dedicated reading time in schools would help to normalise reading for children.
Readingresearch.pdf. Reading for pleasure. Share this page Reading for Pleasure is surely the entitlement of every child, yet how can we foster readers’ desire and engagement? Our research, a two phase OU/UKLA project, examined children’s and teachers’ reading lives, and established effective ways to support Reading for Pleasure (RfP). Advice on navigating the web-site can be found here. You can find out more about the 25 schools we worked with, the evidence we gathered, and the approaches we developed from ‘About this project’.
You can explore the findings, and Examples of Teachers’ RfP Practice that reflect them, by clicking on the five findings circles. This RfP web space aims to support a vibrant professional community of teachers, student teachers, librarians, teaching assistants and literacy coordinators. If you want to keep up to date then sign up for our monthly newsletter with new texts, free PowerPoints for CPD, videos and innovative Examples. You can access resources on. Do we teach children to love reading? Part 1. This sounds like a really obvious question but, after listening to Frank Furedi at researchED on Saturday and subsequently reading his book, The Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, I’ve realised it isn’t something I’ve given much thought.
At one point during his lecture Frank said that few of the people interested in the teaching of reading actually value passing on a love of reading. My initial reaction was to reject this. I asked a question afterwards to challenge this view and his response was to ask why so few young people – especially boys – value reading if we actually value passing on a love of reading? Surely what we really valued ought to be what children learn? Having become a keen observer of my emotional reactions to ideas I find challenging, I recognise that just as Francis Bacon suggested, I prefer to believe what I prefer to be true.
Literacy comes into its own when what people read matters to them. Books, books, books! Like this: Like Loading... Should we abandon reading for pleasure? | stevewillshaw. Let’s be clear about this from the start. I have nothing against reading – I am a massive supporter of reading. It can have a very positive impact on many aspects of people’s lives, especially young people. Nor have I anything against pleasure! My concern is that yoking the two together doesn’t do reading any favours. Reasons why we should stop talking about reading for pleasure. 1. Alternative approaches 1. Many schools’ approaches to reading have been far too insipid. Like this: Like Loading...