Several years ago, I was having a conversation with a senior science teacher who said he didn’t read for pleasure. “Not true,” I replied, “you read for pleasure all the time”.
“That’s just bird magazines, not fiction, not literature,” he said, “that’s not reading.”
This perception that reading for pleasure has to be fiction, and literary fiction at that, is a problem.
17 October 2022
At the recent School Library Association weekend course, I attended a brilliant talk by the formidable Teresa Cremin, who touched on the work that the Open University are conducting into Reading for Pleasure, and how this can be measured, and indeed what the phrase itself means. In short, Reading for Pleasure means reading for choice. It means having the freedom and time to browse reading material, being exposed to a wealth of diverse and inclusive resources (not to mention material that is relevant), being encouraged to speak – formally and informally – about reading experiences, and ultimately developing a lifelong enthusiasm for an activity that can have incredibly positive health benefits.
28 September 2022
To kick off the autumn term, we held a special event with The Open University at this special event where a team of teachers, authors and reading for pleasure experts shared their top tips for creating a reading for pleasure culture.
The panel included Helen Hendry (The Open University), Sue Cheung (Author), Elle McNicoll (Author) and Jo Bowers (Teachers’ Reading Group Lead).
If you weren’t able to join the event live, you can now watch it over on our Youtube Channel
23 August 2022
Our catchment area sits highly on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, scoring within the 10% most deprived areas in Scotland. We know poverty affects children’s development, and we know reading for pleasure is one of the most effective ways of helping children escape the poverty cycle: improving general knowledge; raising attainment; facilitating identity exploration (particularly among marginalised learners); increasing empathy and wellbeing (1). Promoting reading for pleasure is a social justice issue. And it’s good fun. I started my post in late 2019 and took time establishing relationships with students, staff and departments, making connections and actively talking about reading. How was I going to make reading for pleasure a priority in our school?
23 August 2022
The concept of reading for pleasure has been around for a few years now and found real credibility when it was mentioned in the National Curriculum in 2014.
The latest version of this has placed an even greater emphasis on the RfP agenda and OFSTED are now looking at how schools focus on this. Professor Therea Cremin in Reading for Pleasure is essential to children’s education said:
“Ofsted is, in fact, looking to see evidence of a rich and wide reading curriculum, encompassing lots of reading aloud to children, and with children to support reading by themselves. Developing a love of reading is officially recognised in the United Kingdom as being essential to children’s education.”
Reading for pleasure is often considered a fiction activity. Information books have seemed to be under the umbrella of curriculum support; mainly due to the range of books that have been published for young people. We are all familiar with the large education publishers and the myriad titles that they produce to satisfy the needs of the national curriculum.
20 July 2022
We know from the research that in order to encourage volitional reading in young people, teachers need an in-depth and consistently developing knowledge of Children’s Literature. The Teachers’ Reading Challenge provides us all with that opportunity through access to a wide range of recommended reads and, in itself, develops a reading community for practitioners to build their own ‘books in common’ (Cremin et al., 2014). Moreover, we know from working with young people that having a ‘challenge’ to work towards is motivating and encouraging; the reading challenge provides an incentive to prioritise reading for pleasure in our busy lives and explore new texts that we can then use to inspire our young readers!
13 July 2022
I’m delighted that the Teachers’ Reading Challenge is running again this year. It’s a perfect opportunity to talk about an important issue, and also do something to create a positive change.
What’s the issue?
Let’s do an experiment together – write your answers down as you go…
1. Set a timer for 30 seconds.
2. Write down 5 books you’d recommend to a child if you got stopped in the school corridor.
3. Stop when you get to 30 seconds, however many you’ve got.
Now…
4. Cross out any books you read when you were younger, or that your parents read to you.
Q1: How many do you have?
5. Highlight any which aren’t fiction (e.g. information books, graphic novels, comics, manga)
Q2: How many are there?
6. Highlight any that are written by minority authors, or that include characters along those lines.
Q3: How many are there?
This is an exercise I first saw being done a few years ago (I think it was by the brilliant Teresa Cremin) and I’ve added the last few questions. I recently did a training session with NQTs, and none of them had any responses for the last two…
27 June 2022
