Growing Secondary School Student Engagement in Reading for Pleasure

By Derek France, School Librarian

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?

The Library Environment

I noticed students weren’t spending time reading in the library, and if they did, it was at a table and chair in the IT area more often used for studying. This had to change. My initial response was to offer questionnaires on the library environment, but decided against this as responses could be low and I didn’t want to make this a formal exercise. Instead, I had conversations with pupils and classes about their likes, dislikes, and what they would like to change. Student voice is fundamental and this empowered our young people to implement changes in their environment: a clear separation of the IT/study area and ‘the book space’ (student’s words); shelving, tables and seating rearranged for social and private reading areas; reintroducing beanbags for comfortable seating (discovered in a storage room); a dedicated LGBTQI+ collection.

Book Groups

Now that students were choosing to spend time in the library, it was time to launch some book groups. Four groups (all named The PL Page Turners, S1-S3, S4-S6, an Enhanced Learning Provision group, and a staff group) were established. I explained they were not MY book groups, but OUR book groups, and we would be making decisions regarding book choices together. Students were thrilled with this non-hierarchical approach and eager to engage. The S1-S3 and S4-S6 groups began with informal chats about current reads, giving recommendations and swapping books. This quickly progressed to shadowing the Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Prize, The Scottish Teenage Book Prize, and The Excelsior Awards. We also created a rota for student choice, giving everyone the opportunity to choose a book or theme for the group. There was no pressure on students to read all shortlisted books or feel obliged to read books chosen by other students (although they usually did), or to finish a book they were not enjoying. The only stipulation being they be prepared to talk about why. The groups consist of a diverse range of neurodiverse and neurotypical students, reluctant readers, keen readers, and a reader who listens to audiobooks.

I started the ELP group reading aloud the Fighting Fantasy books of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, talking about group decision making and building suspense. The group were quickly lost in these stories and loved deciding what door to open or spell to cast. We shadowed the Greenaway shortlist and used Lego and drawing to create characters and scenes from the books. I presented them with the Carnegie shortlist to choose a new book for reading aloud, and they were entranced listening to Phil Earle’s wonderful When The Sky Falls.

Library Events and Trips

Reading events are great opportunities for encouraging RfP. World Book Day becomes a week of reading-based activities including events such as: Audiobooks & Hot Chocolate; Book Jenga with hardback books; a multi-generational Book Café for students, families and staff (listening and participating in conversations on books with families was delightful, and great to see reading role models in action). I adapted an idea found on the WBD site: Title Quest. This was my first whole-school event and was thrilled to have such involvement from students and staff. Quite simply, I made name tags for staff with the cover of their favourite book or current read, students collected a log sheet on the morning of the event, logging as many as possible during the day and returning them at the end of the day. This was a hugely successful way to generate book conversations between students and staff, some of which had never met.

We take part in the NLT Reading Champions Quiz and students came joint third place in our first ever regional heats, each winning £10 book tokens. On learning of their success, East Lothian Council’s Head of Education topped up each of their tokens to £20! Students were ecstatic and I organised a trip to Edinburgh Waterstones where they were treated to a YA book talk, free cake and drinks from their café, a bag of book goodies and, of course, spending their book tokens.

Twitter is busy with book competitions and giveaways and I was lucky to win one, receiving £250 of Waterstones Book Tokens. With the promise of a book-buying trip, I tasked the pupil librarians to choose books for the library on the proviso their chosen titles were new to the library and to provide a paragraph ‘selling’ their book of choice to me. This was another successful event, with a number of students having never previously visited a bookstore. We made a library display of their chosen books and I added ‘This book was chosen for the library by . . . ‘ stickers to the books.

Beyond the Library

It’s wonderful to be part of student engagement with reading for pleasure, and these are just a few examples of the work which was awarded the Reading Inspiration Award for Secondary Schools, as part of the First Minister’s Reading Challenge. Building on this, I attended OU/UKLA Teachers Reading Group Leader training and I’m excited about launching a group for secondary school staff. Running parallel to this, I will also be launching a parent and carers book group. Each group will have a completely different format, but will focus on contemporary Teen and YA fiction with a mix of online and in-person meetings. Exciting times beckon.

Follow Derek on Twitter @Derek_France | @_pllibrary__

Five book recommendations for diverse titles

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

ISBN: 9780571355112

Anna by Laura Guthrie

ISBN: 9781911279662

Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens edited by Marieke Nijkamp

ISBN: 9780374306502

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (UK Title: What Sunny Saw in the Flames)

ISBN: 9780670011964

Wranglestone by Darren Charlton

ISBN: 9781788951210

Sources

^{Hempel-Jorgensen, Amelia; Cremin, Teresa; Harris, Diane and Chamberlain, Liz (2018). Pedagogy for reading for pleasure in low socio-economic primary schools: beyond ‘pedagogy of poverty’? Literacy, 52(2) pp. 86–94↩}