Reading for Pleasure 2023-2024

Reading for Pleasure             

The ethos of Reading for Pleasure (RfP) is embedded into the daily routines of school and our attitude as staff and pupils towards reading. Using the Teachers as Readers (TAR’s) research as a foundation to build our love and pleasure of reading we believe it to be a vital part of our school and support the progress of pupils during their time at Peover Superior and beyond the school gates. The TAR’s research showed that in order to effectively develop children’s RfP, teachers need to develop:

1. Considerable knowledge of children’s literature and other texts

2. Knowledge of children’s reading practices

3. A reading for pleasure pedagogy, encompassing:  

· Social reading environments

· Reading aloud

· Informal book talk, inside‐text talk and recommendations

· Independent reading time

4. As Reading Teachers – teachers who read and readers who teach

5. Reciprocal and interactive reading communities

 

As a school, the impact of COVID will have affected many areas of children’s education. Their reading and their attitude towards this being no exception. In response to the recent times we will be focusing on strand 5 of the TAR’s research by rebuilding our reading community.

 

Steps to achieve this:

• Displays of readers- each classroom will have an area for children to display what they are reading. This may differ from class to class and as they enter different key stages but a display to spark and enthuse discussion should be visible. Some recommended ways to do this are:

• Readers in Disguise, where school staff take photos of themselves reading but in disguise, and children guess who the readers are, based on the text and their knowledge of staff interests
• Extreme Reading, where staff, parents and children take photographs of people reading in unusual places: a mechanic under a car, a swimming pool attendant, a child in a supermarket trolley
• Who reads in your house? Where staff and children take photos of anyone reading at home in whatever context and display these.
• DESKBOOKS- children to have written on their desks what they are reading and they can change this display themselves as they move through books.

 

• We’re going on a reading hunt- Invite the class to join you on a reading hunt in the local community to take photos of the myriad of signs, labels, symbols, texts evident locally and the reading available in the immediate community. Make a montage and explore, for example, the multiple languages used. You could ask children to take their own photos too as a homework project and possibly to ask their family/home community about what they notice.
• Book celebrations and festivals- Many opportunities exist to celebrate the power of literature and other texts. Class and school communities participate for example in World Book Day, Readathons, The Big Read and so on and can run their own reading events/festivals/competitions and involve authors. Alone these can be tokenistic, but as part of planned support for RfP they work well.

 

Alongside this, the teacher will get to know new readers in their classrooms as part of transition. Working alongside the guidelines for a socially distant classroom where the physical passing of books cannot continue, pupils and staff can still be creative in ways to encourage book blether and recommendations. Some ways to do this are:

• Book clubs- children reading the same book as their peers/teacher and informally discussing.
• Recommendations board- post it noting books they think their friends will like.
• Creating ‘book rest’ stations where you can quarantine your books before passing them on with a waiting list so children can sign up to the ones they want to read.
• Read aloud sign up sheet to share stories with their class/key stage in assemblies.