News | Teachers' Reading Challenge

Growing Secondary School Student Engagement in Reading for Pleasure

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?

Keep Reading

23 August 2022

How can information books be used in a reading for pleasure context?

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.

Keep Reading

20 July 2022

Encouraging Reading for Pleasure at KS3 and Beyond

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

Is knowledge of children's literature really that important?

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…

Keep Reading

27 June 2022

How you can apply your learning from the Teachers’ Reading Challenge into your classroom or library

The Teachers’ Reading Challenge is open to any education or library professional who wants to expand their knowledge of children’s books and develop their understanding of reading for pleasure pedagogy. Keep reading to find out how different roles can get involved in the Challenge.

Keep Reading

24 June 2022

Engaging less confident readers with reading for pleasure

It is September and the eager young teens are telling me how much they just love reading and what books are their favourites. This is wonderful, but my ears are especially tuned to hear the voices declaring to hate reading: it is boring, they say, and a waste of time. I notice too those who look at the floor and say nothing.

Some of our students find reading difficult, they struggle with the mechanics of decoding, following a story line is a challenge, sitting still and concentrating is not easy. This may be because of a learning difficulty or condition such as dyslexia or ADHD, or they may have missed parts of their schooling. We try and find ways to make reading accessible to them.

More students are reluctant because they don’t identify as readers, haven’t had hours of storybooks read to them as young children, haven’t seen their families read, have few books at home and libraries and book shops are an unfamiliar land. We try to build a profile of these students as readers, to raise their confidence and to use their interests to hook them in.

1 June 2022

How to encourage reading for pleasure on a budget

By school librarian, Kristabelle Williams

With recent research showing children and young people’s reading enjoyment increasing during the lockdown (1), and their value of school libraries as places to relax, discover books, and find sanctuary (2), the start of this new school year is an opportunity for school librarians to build on these findings in supporting students reading, learning and wellbeing.

However as real term cuts to school funding continue, school library budgets remain under the increasing pressure they were experiencing pre-pandemic. Although the School Library Association standards for Secondary School Libraries from 2015 recommended that library budgets be allocated at £15 per pupil, this has been and continues to be out of reach for many, especially state school settings as seen in the Great School Libraries survey in 2019 (3). There should be no barriers to the benefits of free access to quality literature and information; here are some tips and strategies to encourage reading for pleasure on a budget in your school library.

1 June 2022