Teach them to love reading, but how?

Let’s get them to love reading, how?

One of the most frequent debates I see on the social media of the education world is the role of reading and how it is delivered. More specifically how we can develop and foster a love of reading. In the second half of the previous academic year I began to give this considerable thought. How can we give a child an emotion? How can we ‘make them’ want to read? This I felt was more of a challenge than teaching them how to write a sentence for example or learn their tables. Those are tasks that can be proven and completed. In comparison loving reading is, of course, an intrinsic emotion that is hard to quantify. This is even further complicated by the fact that much of this reading naturally will be done away from school and as children get older away from parents too. Therefore I set about a three pronged attack on my class’ unsuspecting minds and observed how they got on.

Reading is number 1 – This sounds silly but I looked at my own class bookshelf and noticed that though there were several great children’s books on it (and a number of education ones) there was no real depth. How was I promoting quality children’s literature to my class if I wasn’t doing this myself? To let you in on a little secret, I haven’t read perhaps half of the books on my bookshelf, but the children can see they are there and that I fully have the intention of reading them. I am sure many teachers are already doing this however I now have many teachers popping into my room to borrow off my bookshelf. These books have been bought by the school they aren’t ‘mine’ but it also shows the children the value that the other adults in the school put by high quality texts. The class rushed to ask for recommendations and requests and next year I am going to make some books ‘out of bounds’ like a forbidden section in the library. There will be special release dates when the children can then ask to borrow something that I know they have had their eyes on for a while rather than just asking for it because they like the cover. It is utterly imperative that teachers know children’s books, Dahl, Morpurgo and Enid Blyton have their place but they are most certainly not what we should be relying on when you have fantastic writers like Marcus Sedgwick, Abi Elphinstone and Maz Evans producing relevant, engaging and enthralling modern tales that children can relate directly to.

Freedom. . .  to a point – So what is appropriate for children in say Upper Key Stage 2 to be reading? Who gets to decide? Is it even our job to decide? Personally I think that is entirely up to you, you are the professional, you are the teacher, you know your class, do what you think is right. Having said that you’ve read this far so I will now bore you with what I think. I want every single child in my class to read as much as they can, as many different styles and genres as they can and as many different text types too. We have a responsibility to support this and if necessary set barriers to ensure this happens. This year I will be colour coding specific genres of different books, the children will record what book they have read and see what genre this falls into. At Christmas we will discuss what colour cards they have and why this is. If they have only read what we have dubbed ‘family dilemma’ books, Tracey Beaker etc is this necessarily going to provide them with the depth of language and setting variety we would want? If a child adores Beast Quest that is brilliant however I feel it is my professional responsibility to also ensure they are reading books that aren’t fantasy based, different text types like poetry and a range of non-fiction too. Think of it like this, imagine speaking to said child when they hit 16 and they had only ever read fantasy, they may have grown into Tolkien and Pratchett but they will have been denied the world of Dickens and Stephen King because we just want to make sure they are reading? All the research shows reading tends to lessen as children hit their teenage years, we must show them the whole world of possibilities before they start to narrow their reading choice even further. Of course some of this rests with parents also but I feel we must take a hand in this. If we as educators demonstrate a desire to read as widely as possible, and explain the virtues of different genres and text types then little constraint and directing should be needed anyway.

Beyond reading – now I know this can be a contentious point and that’s fine but I love reading records. When used properly they are a treasure trove of information and evidence for a teacher. Note I am not speaking of the diary that says ‘Read page 4-8. Signed Mum’ this is entirely pointless and just smacks of teachers pushing their children to fill them in because SLT say they must be used.

What I am talking about can be seen below,

This particular child has recorded her journey through the book. She wasn’t initially enjoying the story though as you can see from her comments. However she explains what she feels the author’s intentions are.  By combining simple comprehension explanation with their own feelings and attitudes to the text I am able to get a much clearer understanding of where this child is with their reading. I am not going to pretend this was the standard for every child however every child did develop their diary almost as a companion; they viewed reading as naturally flowing into writing and discussing books. It is almost a diary of their reading accomplishments and feelings. This feeds into their class ethic and work.

By May I had half of my class spending 40 minutes a morning reading to each other in what became known as reading conferences and then sharing their feelings about the books. They trained themselves, learnt from others and guided each other through this process to such a point that other than dropping in the occasional ‘question bomb’, as they came to dub them, they were fully independent. This left me to fully engage with the children that still needed more support on decoding and comprehension.  

I am not going to pretend that every child in my class suddenly fell in love with reading and did it without pause. However  every single child left more engaged with books, better aware of how to talk about and interact with a book and far more aware of the texts around them. Please try these ideas, let me know if you have any suggestions of how to improve them or if you think I am missing a trick somewhere. Good luck!Let’s get them to love reading, how?