About Us | BOOK RIOT We’re Different Book Riot is dedicated to the idea that writing about books and reading should be just as diverse as books and readers are. So sometimes we are serious and sometimes silly. Some of our writers are pros. And the only thing we like as much as books is talking about books with other readers. Our Beliefs We create.We always prefer the book to the movie.We riot as a team.We geek out on books.We’re leaders.We practice charity.We miss our subway stop cause the book is that good.We are non-traditional.We believe in family (bookshelves and cats count). Ownership Book Riot is a Riot New Media Group property.
Six things you can do to get boys reading more The OECD consistently finds girls perform significantly better than boys in reading. This gap can also be observed across the Australian NAPLAN reading data. Research suggests reading more can improve literacy outcomes across a range of indicators. But girls typically read more frequently than boys, and have a more positive attitude toward reading. Read more: Research shows the importance of parents reading with children – even after children can read Parents read more with their daughters. So how can parents and educators help bridge the gap for boys’ literacy? Stop telling boys they only like non-fiction To improve boys’ literacy outcomes, parents and educators may look for ways to connect boys with reading. But this contention is not typically supported by recent quantitative research. Firstly, the reading of fiction is more consistently associated with literacy benefit than non-fiction in areas such as verbal ability and reading performance. Six strategies for connecting boys with books
New website CharacTour is an expansive database for fictional characters - Boing Boing We’ve all been there a million times: Flicking through Netflix or Amazon or Hulu with no idea what to commit to watching. Nothing immediately grabs your interest and the plot descriptions aren’t selling any of them. Thankfully a newly-launched site called CharacTour offers a new way to think about movies, TV shows, books, and video games: Through their characters. I got a chance to contribute to the site so admittedly I might be a tad biased. But it's a fun place to spend an afternoon and a potentially invaluable tool for actually deciding what to watch. Basically CharacTour is an expansive online database for fictional characters. But there are other ways to find new characters too: Take a simple Personalized Match quiz and instantly find characters who are similar to you (getting Liz Lemon as my number one match was a life highlight for me). The site also has interactive sections that let users voice their opinions about all sorts of different characters.
10 ways to get the most out of silent reading in schools Reading aloud can help young children learn about new words and how to sound them. There’s great value too in providing opportunities for children to enjoy regular silent reading, which is sustained reading of materials they select for pleasure. But not all schools consistently offer this opportunity for all of their students. We regularly hear from teachers and teacher librarians who are concerned about the state of silent reading in schools. Read more: Read aloud to your children to boost their vocabulary They’re worried students don’t have enough opportunity to enjoy sustained reading in school. For some young people, silent reading at school is the only reading for pleasure they experience. Silent reading silenced Research suggests silent reading opportunities at school are often cancelled and may dwindle as students move through the years of schooling. Yet regular reading can improve a student’s reading achievement. So, what should silent reading look like? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
theconversation When we think of reading for our children, we are often misled into thinking that we need to focus on one type of book, such as picture books or novels in order to practise specific, reading-related skills. However, this narrowly-focused approach to reading instruction can often have undesirable benefits, such as turning kids off reading altogether. As parents, we often feel that when we select children’s books for them we are supporting them to achieve at their level – though this frequently has the opposite effect. When we restrict choice, particularly to contrived, boring texts, children frequently see this as an indicator of their reading capability and therefore meet that low expectation. As adults, we read what we like and enjoy. As research and commonsense tell us, children need to be engaged in their reading material in order to practise reading. Click to enlarge Stephen Krashen, a respected literacy academic, suggests that the benefits are clear:
A place to get away from it all: 5 ways school libraries support student well-being Students in Australia and around the world have experienced significant challenges this year, including the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters. Globally, as many as one in five young people may experience mental-health problems. These can be exacerbated, or even brought on by, stressful life events including economic pressures related to the pandemic. We know teacher librarians and school libraries play an important role in supporting young people’s reading and broader academic achievement. But school libraries play a more diverse role in students’ lives, among which is to support their well-being. Here are five ways they do this. 1. Creating a positive, safe and supportive school environment can help schools meet young people’s academic, emotional and social needs. Whether students are victims of bullying or simply feel like they don’t fit in, school libraries can provide safe spaces in sometimes challenging school environments. 2. 3. School librarians are digital literacy experts.
How to Build a Culture of Reading Posted by Jessica Keigan on Tuesday, 09/01/2015 Building a school culture is an overwhelming but important task. In 2009, my collaborative team and I read Readicide: How Schools are Killing the Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher. This fabulous book discusses how schools have inadvertently killed the love of reading. Since reading Readicide, my peers and I have worked diligently to create a reading culture in our school. Teacher Buy-in Sometimes the hardest group to sell on trying something new is teachers. When we started our process of building a reading culture in our school, we had an entire common course team of English and Social Studies teachers willing to implement some sort of choice reading routine. After our first year, which had decent success, the initial group of teachers shared their excitement and ideas with other collaborative teams. Student Buy-In As Gallagher suggests in his book, getting students on board to read regularly poses some challenges.
Op-Ed: Do students learn best via printed books or digital texts? As the pandemic drove a sudden, massive and necessary shift to online education last year, students were forced to access much of their school reading assignments digitally. Turning so heavily to screens for school reading was a temporary fix — and should remain that way. A wealth of research comparing print and digital reading points to the same conclusion — print matters. For most students, print is the most effective way to learn and to retain that knowledge long-term. When measuring reading comprehension, researchers typically ask people to read passages and then answer questions or write short essays. Regardless of the age of the students, reliably similar patterns occur. When the text is longer than about 500 words, readers generally perform better on comprehension tests with print passages. Part of the explanation for discrepancies between print and digital test scores involves the physical properties of paper. However, not all students relish reading in print. In 2012, the U.S.
What Administrators Can Do to Promote a Reading Culture Dear administrators, I have been pleading with teachers for a few years to please help students become passionate readers. I have given as many ideas as I could and directed toward the great minds that inspire me as well. And yet, it is not just the teachers that have an immense power over whether children will read or not. You can believe in choice for all. You can buy books. You can fight to have a librarian full-time in your building. You can celebrate books read. You can protect the read aloud. You can promote independent reading time. You can hire teachers that love reading. You can use levels for books and not for children. You can have tough conversations. What else can you do to create a school where the love of reading flourishes? You can be a guest read alouder. You can have books in your office for students to read. You can share your own reading life by displaying your titles outside your office. You can make assemblies and other fun events celebrate literacy. Like this:
How I made the school library the heart of our school - Books2All In May 2017, I started my role as reading engagement coordinator in Queensbridge School – a mixed comprehensive in Birmingham – having come from a background in university libraries and education. Despite a life-long love of young adult (YA) fiction, libraries and reading, this was my first experience working in a school library and my first day back at school for a long time. The library was new, having been relocated from another part of the school and opened a year before. Schools libraries are a much-needed safe space Making the library an enticing and safe space was something that I started to work on as soon as possible, and I began to create huge displays that could be seen from the corridor as pupils and staff walked by. Of course, the main part of my role is ensuring that our pupils have access to inclusive, diverse and exciting books. School libraries support reading for empathy School library sessions familiarise children with genres School libraries can adapt to lockdown!
Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer Gregory Currie, a professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham, recently argued in the New York Times that we ought not to claim that literature improves us as people, because there is no “compelling evidence that suggests that people are morally or socially better for reading Tolstoy” or other great books. Actually, there is such evidence. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, reported in studies published in 2006 and 2009 that individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective. This link persisted even after the researchers factored in the possibility that more empathetic individuals might choose to read more novels. (MORE: Oprah as Harvard’s Commencement Speaker Is an Endorsement of Phony Science) None of this is likely to happen when we’re scrolling through TMZ.