P10
Just for the fun of it!
Nicola Illsley argues that a relaxed approach, with easy access and plenty of ways to enjoy all types of material, helps children develop a positive attitude to reading.
There is a significant difference between teaching children to read and encouraging them to read for pleasure. Obviously as teachers our job is to do the former, but the latter is the key to a lifelong relationship with text and all that it can provide for us.
At our school the children take books home daily from graded reading collections. We try to include as many ‘non-reading scheme’ books as possible in these collections. Children choose any book from their ‘reading colour’ and we encourage them to choose from a colour below theirs if there is a book they fancy.
New books are a fundamental way to excite children. We introduce them in assembly, reading snippets and whetting the appetite. It’s great if you can clue into what will get the more reluctant children particularly keen – books that are funny, picture books aimed at older children, graphic novels and anything which might seem to have an element of the forbidden, mysterious or sinister.
We are lucky in having a library, purposely fitted with bright coloured shelves and tables, and thousands of books. We run the Junior Librarian computer system which incorporates the use of a scanner and a thumb print reader, which the children love using. Children are allowed to choose any book from the library, regardless of difficulty, which means they can read (or look at) books they wouldn’t be able to access from the graded reading shelves.
Time for a change
In my classroom, there is a time each day when children can change their reading book if they are ready to. While some change books, others are allowed to read freely from any book. The children sit by themselves on chairs or on the carpet, in pairs or in small groups.
At this point in the day the children are definitely enjoying books! There is a concentrated atmosphere of absorption. Some children will even be enjoying books without reading them. They might be being read to, looking at pictures and discussing them with a friend, answering questions from a quiz book or browsing an atlas just for the pleasure of the shapes and colours.
When children are allowed relaxed time with books without any stress or expectation attached, they will find a myriad of ways to actually enjoy them.
Reading to children is a must, of course. Most teachers are expert questioners – managing to cover all appropriate assessment focuses – and still get some of the book read!
Children’s author Michael Rosen, who spoke at the NUT’s Reading for Pleasure conference* in the spring, inspired me when he advocated the use of questions that we don’t know the answer to – asking children whether they have ever felt like that, what they would say to that character if they could step into the story, etc.
* see
www.teachers.org.uk/reading
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