School reading culture...breakthrough moments

Last Thursday, I was absolutely delighted and extremely humbled to have been awarded the Egmont 2018 Reading for Pleasure Teacher Award. I travelled to London with my headteacher to attend the BERA/UKLA/OU Reading for Pleasure research symposium, and was presented with the award by Michael Rosen.

Being part of a school with reading at its heart is absolutely fundamental to what I believe in as a teacher. I'm fortunate to work in an environment where I'm supported, trusted and actively encouraged by my headteacher to take risks and try new ideas, as well as alongside an amazing group of teachers and support staff who understand the importance of creating a deep, genuine and firmly embedded reading for pleasure culture. They know that it can't be achieved with quick fix solutions and short term interventions. They know that adult knowledge of children's literature is essential, and that independent reading time must be protected against the pressures of the timetable. They know that reading aloud, in all its various forms, is crucial, and that encouraging spontaneous and informal book talk at every opportunity is an important way for children to truly engage with their reading. They know all this, and much more, and they do their best to make sure it happens.

After three years of extremely hard work from everyone in our school community, it's noticeable that over the past few months, there's been a significant cultural shift in the attitude towards reading. Conversations and interactions are happening between pupils, staff and parents that are making it a very exciting place to be.

For example, just before Christmas we introduced pupil-staff reading buddies (visit the Open University Reading for Pleasure site for more details). I'd been working with my buddy from Year 2 for several weeks. He wasn't a keen reader at home, showed little interest in reading at school and was one of those children who, if not picked up, could easily slip through the net. He'd always dutifully come along to our meetings and listen politely to whichever book I'd selected, but didn't really engage with the stories. In fact, most of his time would be spent looking out of the window or rearranging the cushions he was sitting on. After a couple of weeks, he started to show more interest, making an effort to listen to the story and even asking the occasional question. One lunchtime, just before half-term, he sauntered into the classroom (to be honest, he saunters everywhere), with his hands hidden behind his back...

"Hello, lovely to see you. How are you?"

"Mmmm, yeah, alright."

"Have you come to talk to me? Is everything OK?"

"Mmmm, yeah."

Slightly awkward pause...

"So, did you want to show me something?"

"Mmmm, yeah."

Slightly more awkward pause...

"Right then...what is it? Are you holding something exciting in your hands?"

At this point, he gave an enormous grin, and whipped out a copy of Harry And The Dinosaurs Go To School from behind his back.

"I found this book in my classroom and I brought it. I think it's going to be really good and we should read it."

"Well, I'd be delighted to, absolutely delighted."

It felt like a massive breakthrough. He'd found and chosen a book that he thought he'd enjoy, and had wanted to share that experience with someone. It was another tiny, but significant, step on his journey to becoming a genuine reader and I was thrilled to have been there for it. Moments like those can't easily be measured or quantified (apart from by the size of a smile!), but they're the moments that genuinely matter, the moments that can have an impact on a child's attitude to reading forever.

A second example, several weeks ago I was heading along the corridor to make (yet another) coffee when I walked past three teachers, all from different year groups, discussing the wonderful Letters From The Lighthouse by Emma Carroll. About ten minutes later, having made my drink, I came back and they were still there, but this time comparing the book and film versions of Wonder by RJ Palacio. Teachers, who had a thousand other things that they could be doing, were standing around and talking about children's books! Reading is increasingly becoming an essential part of the daily conversation across the school and it's very, very exciting.

Similar breakthroughs are happening across the school community. There are staff giving up five minutes of their break to seek out books that their reading buddies will enjoy. There are Year 6 children wanting to read stories to children from Year 1 and 2 in the library at lunchtime. There are parents working with their children to create book characters from potatoes. There are classes spontaneously starting informal book groups based on shared interests (the Amulet group is growing by the hour!). There are pupils cheering when new deliveries of books arrive in the post. There are about half of our teaching staff attending a local Teachers' Reading Group. There is a real book buzz, a reading buzz, a feeling of gathering momentum and a sense that the school reading community is beginning to take on a life of its own. We're not yet a reading for pleasure school, there's still a lot that we need to improve and develop further, but we believe we're heading in the right direction and we're very proud.

Promoting poetry in primary schools

Poetry has been the poor relation in the teaching of English at primary schools for as long as I can remember. In the staffroom, you might occasionally overhear the Year 4 team quickly discussing whether it's time for the infamous annual 'poetry unit', or Year 6 teachers swapping 'fantastic poetry comprehension worksheets with loads of inference questions that'll definitely help the kids with their SATs', but that's not really teaching poetry as far as I'm concerned. For children to genuinely have an appreciation of it, it needs to be a regular, high-profile part of the classroom routine, not just a bolted-on extra.

Our classroom poetry collection

Over the past few years, we've tried to nurture a love of reading, writing and performing poetry across the school and make poetry a more integral part of the school day. Below are some of the ideas that we've introduced over recent months.

Three minute poem
At the start of every half-term, the children all write down some potential poem titles (eg Lonely Giraffes, The Cinema Trip, Beyond The Sky) on to slips of paper. We collect them in and then, two or three times a week, one of the titles is randomly selected and shared. The children (and staff!) have three minutes to write a poem based upon the title given. The only rule is that nobody can stop writing until the three minutes are up. It was a real challenge at first (I can't think of anything, It's too hard, I've got an earache, etc), but they soon realised it was a fun way of writing without rules and that it allowed their imaginations take off in strange directions. We always make sure that we read a few at the end of each session.

Poem of the Day
I've written about this before (here), so won't go into too much detail, but basically the children sign up at the beginning of each week to perform a favourite poem to the rest of the class.

Practising for Poem of the Day

Blackout Poetry
We attempted this for the first time last week. It's a good way to squeeze a final bit of use out of any books which would otherwise be destined for the recycling bin, although if you're lucky enough not to have any books in such bad condition, photocopies work just as well. Everyone is given page or two from a book to work with. First, they read through the page to get an overall view of the text and then select two or three words that they want to appear in their poem. The children then read the text again and start to black-out surplus words with a marker pen. They found this difficult to start with, until they realised that they weren't trying to create 'lines' of poetry, but just groups of words that looked and sounded good together. A lot of them started by removing only one or two words from each line. However, they soon noticed that the more ruthless they were, the more the poem would have an identity of its own, rather than simply being a shorter version of the page they started with. One of the children ultimately ended up with a poem of nine words from a full page of text, which sounded great when read aloud.

Our class blackout poems

N+7

Writing N+7 poetry is perhaps one of the most well known examples of applying an Oulipo (constrained writing) technique and is certainly the one that's been most enjoyed by my class. The children started off with a poem (they actually used their favourite song lyrics the first time we attempted it) and went through it highlighting the nouns. Once they'd finished, they then found each word in a dictionary and replaced it with the noun that appeared seven nouns after it. It's great fun and completely removes the 'I don't know what to write' option. When we'd tried it a few times, the class were all full of ideas about how to adapt it, including changing the number, replacing verbs and adjectives, using antonyms and simply swapping nouns around.

Leo's N+7 poem, based on No Money by Galantis
Sorry I ain't got no mongoose I'm not trying to be funny but I left it all at honey today.
You can call me what you wanna I ain't giving you a dolphin  this time I ain't gonna run away.
You might knock me down, you might knock me down, but I will get back up again
You can call it how you wanna I ain't giving you a dolphin this time I ain't gonna run away.
This tinsel.
This tinsel I ain't gonna rush rush rush rush rush...
Not this tinsel, not this tinsel.
This tinsel I ain't gonna rush rush rush rush rush.
Not this tinsel, not this tinsel.
Not this tinsel, not this tinsel (tinsel)

Nursery Rhyme mash-up
Even with a Year 6 post-SATs class, this activity went down a storm. The children were given copies of about a dozen nursery rhymes and then simply had to create their own, either by mixing up the lines from one nursery rhyme or by selecting and adapting lines from different nursery rhymes. It's quick and can produce some amusing and imaginative combinations. Nursery rhymes also work very well with activities such as N+7.

Humpty Dumpty went up the hill
To fetch a plum pie
Along came a spider
And bumped his head
Then down came a blackbird
And went wee, wee, wee all the way home
  

Some of our recent purchases

The Room of Stars
This fun game came directly from Jumpstart! Poetry by Pie Corbett. It's an easy way to produce a whole class poem and can be hilarious. Half of the class need to write down five places (castle, river, shed, village, desert) and the other half of the class need to write down five nouns (we started with concrete nouns but they much preferred using abstract nouns). We then selected one child from each half of the class to choose one of their words to pair and create a line of the poem (eg the room of stars, the mountains of desperation, the cafe of misery). Most of the lines worked really well, some were a little dubious (the toilet of stress) and some were very quickly discarded (the bedroom of ecstasy!). We then put the lines together to create the poem.

We're going to spend a lot more time on poetry over the next few weeks, and will be sharing some of our work with other classes and with parents. If you've got a fantastic idea to share, or have tried anything in your class that's been a huge success, please let me know. Equally, if you've tried anything that's been a massive flop, let me know that too, so that we can avoid it.

Below are some the books which have provided the ideas above. I'd also recommend that you visit the blogs of Michael Rosen and Brian Moses, as they're both absolutely full of great ideas for developing a love of poetry.

Useful books

Jumpstart! Poetry, Pie Corbett

What Is Poetry?, Michael Rosen

Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?, Kenneth Koch

Poems To Perform, Julia Donaldson

Published in September 2017: How To Write Poems, Joseph Coelho

Patron of Reading update

Last month I wrote a short article for the UKLA Primary 4-11 magazine about the growth of the Patron of Reading initiative across the UK. Some of that article appears below.

The Patron of Reading initiative continues to flourish in schools across the United Kingdom. Since it was last mentioned in this magazine (Summer 2014), it has grown from approximately 50 schools to more than 150. For those currently unaware of the initiative, a Patron of Reading is a school’s special designated author (or poet, illustrator or storyteller) with whom they develop a relationship over a period of time. As well as all the usual benefits to a school from organising an author visit, working with a Patron can offer whole lot more.

John Dougherty, author of the Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series and Patron of Reading at West Earlham Junior School since 2013, said:

I love visiting schools, and invariably get a great response from the kids; but there’s something different about visiting my Patron of Reading school. I think it’s the sense of connection - even of ownership - that the children feel with me and my work. And I can do things that I don’t normally do on school visits - drop-in visits to classrooms for a bit of a chat about books; assemblies where we challenge and explore preconceptions about reading; even talking shops with parents - where we can get stuck right in, without any need for warm-up or introduction.

Tim Redgrave, headteacher of Ysgol Esgob Morgan in North Wales and the person behind the original idea, reported:

Having a personal link to a ‘famous’ person has helped make reading cool at our school. The interaction is a very personal link between the child and the author. It's opened up a new world of literature for our pupils who now read for pleasure so much more. We’ve had 100% completion of the Summer Reading Challenge three years on the bounce, and have extended the library once and need to do so again! All from having a Patron of Reading!

The second Patron of Reading conference took place in London earlier this year and was attended by almost 100 authors, poets, librarians and teachers. Speakers included Alan MacDonald, author of the Dirty Bertie books, who spoke passionately about the importance of schools with authors; Josh Seigal, who talked about how being a performance poet helped him in his patron role and Gillian Cross, author of Carnegie Medal winner Wolf, who shared her experiences of being a patron at more than one school. There were many other speakers throughout the day and a full write-up of the day can be found on the Patron of Reading website.

Ways that schools and patrons can support each other by sharing good practice have been discussed several times over the past year. Ian Coles, representing Big Green Bookshop Education CIC , has recently helped create the first local ‘chapter’ of patrons in Haringey:

We asked to set up the first regional chapter because schools were always asking the Big Green Bookshop to arrange author visits and we knew there was already significant support for the scheme across the borough.
We began by inviting existing patrons to join the cluster and then brokered some additional partnerships and held a launch event in partnership with the library service. The response from schools and authors has been fantastic, with many new partnerships to be announced in the autumn, and schools queuing up for patrons. We are beginning to create opportunities for patrons to share ideas and successes - showcasing activity on our website and encouraging authors to tag Patron of Reading activities on their social media. We are also building our understanding of the barriers to participation for some schools - and exploring exciting ideas such as shared patrons and patrons in branch libraries.
The best thing so far has been the sheer volume of goodwill towards this initiative (which Big Green Bookshop Education has undertaken to support for at least 3 years). Schools, authors, storytellers, community organisations, other bookshops: so many people are supporting us (not forgetting Big Green Bookshop customers who have generously donated money and help). It's early days for us yet but it's up to us all to make this something really special.

The Patron of Reading initiative has also recently started to forge links with Empathy Lab, a new venture from Miranda McKearney OBE, founder of The Reading Agency. Empathy Lab is researching into how a more focused use of stories and books can help children build the foundational skill of empathy, and is beginning to trial their empathy education approach with a small group of schools from September 2015. Miranda says of the Patron of Reading/Empathy Lab partnership:
Wouldn't it be amazing if every single child was putting into practice the empathy skills to respect, value and care for themselves, other people and the world? We're inspired by the power of empathy to make the world a better place, and the power of stories to build empathy.
Liaising with writer Helena Pielichaty, we have begun testing some of our thinking with the Patron of Reading initiative, a wonderful grassroots organisation, which places authors in schools as champions of reading.
We see authors as a powerful catalyst in a drive to help children develop empathy. To create compelling characters, writers use empathy in spades; they're empathy experts. We hope to build an army of authors helping lead a movement to connect literacy and reading for pleasure more closely with social and emotional education.  As part of this we are planning to start working with several Patron of Reading schools in the very near future.

As the initiative has been up and running for almost four years, several patrons are now coming to the end of their tenure in schools. Fortismere School in Haringey was one of the very first schools to adopt a patron, Sita Brahamachari, author of Artichoke Hearts, in 2012. In September 2015, Sita is handing over the baton to SF Said, the creator of the Varjak Paw series. Gill Ward, the librarian at Fortismere, gives her view as to why the initiative has been so successful:

The Patron of Reading scheme has worked brilliantly for us; it's wonderful for the students to have their own, dedicated author and to be able to build up a connection with them. Sita inspired many of our students to explore the world of books and even some of our reluctant readers are discovering themselves in books. The great thing about the scheme is that it has allowed Fortismere and Sita to build our own special relationship and way of working. I'm now super-excited and looking forward to working with SF; it's going to be so interesting to see where our Patron of Reading journey will take us next.

SF Said, a passionate advocate of reading for pleasure in schools, added:

I've always believed that reading for pleasure has the power to change people's lives. I'm honoured and thrilled to be Fortismere School's new Patron of Reading. Just seeing the superb school library and hearing librarian Gillian Ward's passion for books, I feel sure that Fortismere children have access to the very best resources. I'm looking forward to inspiring the children to make the most of them, and building on the brilliant work done by Sita.

Why has the Patron of Reading idea been so successful in schools? Michael Rosen, the keynote speaker at the recent launch of the Haringey chapter, summed it up when he said that it was a grassroots initiative, owned directly by schools and writers, for the benefit of children and young people, in direct contrast to many ‘top-down’ interventions and organisations. As the creator of the Patron of Reading website, I am always genuinely delighted when I am contacted by a school who talk about wanting to create a ‘genuine’ or ‘real’ reading culture, and whether there are writers available to become patrons. I am also equally delighted when I am contacted by a writer who has heard from their peers about the impact that having a Patron of Reading can have on children’s attitude to reading.

If there are any schools or colleges who are interested in getting involved, please visit the website - your Patron of Reading is waiting!

www.patronofreading.co.uk