Reading for Pleasure and technology

There was an interesting discussion on the Reading for Pleasure in Schools group on Facebook last week about the relative merits of using books and films in class. It made me think about how technology can be used when trying to create a reading culture and how effective my own use of it was (conclusion- requires improvement).

Anyway, I thought I'd share some websites, apps, etc, that I've used to help promote reading over the past couple of years. Please feel free to add to the list with other ideas you've tried.

Quadblogging- created by David Mitchell
I first used this site about three years ago when I was trying to attract more visitors to my previous school's book blog. It's a wonderful way of sharing your blog with other schools around the world. The first time we joined in, we were paired up with a school in Scotland, a school in Australia and a school in the USA, which was extremely exciting for the children (and a great way of getting some good geography work in). They enjoyed recommending books to each other and seeing which authors were popular in more than one country.

The Literacy Shed- created by Rob Smith
You can't not already be aware of this site, which is absolutely full of resources, so I won't waste too much time explaining it. Rarely a week goes by when I don't use it for something in class.

Mr P's ICT blog- created by Leeroy Parkinson
Not specifically about reading, but full of ideas on how to get the most from the technology you have in the classroom. There was a really interesting recent post about reading with augmented reality, which I'm going to use in the near future.

Book blogging
Blogging can have a massive impact on writing standards (research evidence here), but I've also found it to be a great way to engage children with reading. I set up a book blog at my old school about three years ago and have used it with all the classes I've taught since. There's an earlier post about book blogging here which explains some of the benefits.

Audioboom
A great way to record and share audio content. We've used it for book reviews, poetry performances, author interviews, etc. Here's a clip of my young daughter reading We're Going On A Bear Hunt.

Linoit
Online sticky notes. Can be used to get an immediate response to a book or a poem. It's really simple to install and use.We most recently used it to share our thoughts on the books by the author Eva Ibbotson.

Zeemaps
Can be used to create maps. I created one showing where some of the different authors that the children enjoy reading are originally from.

Pinterest
Not one I've used, but always interesting to look at other people's pins. Here's one from Primary English showing books about the Race to the South Pole.

Polldaddy
Really simple way to get the children voting in online polls and surveys. We used it to vote on our favourite animal characters in books. The runaway winners were Dude, Bro and Squirt from Koala Calamity, although admittedly we had just finished reading that as our class book the day before.

We've also recorded video trailers for books using iPads and editing software. Twitter is great; we've posted 140 character book reviews, harassed engaged with authors and poets, found out about books awards and competitions, etc. It's also a good way to share reading success with parents.

New challenges

I'm very excited to be moving to a new school after Easter. It's been through a really tough time over the past few years, and has had a high turnover of staff. One of the first challenges is going to be to try and help create a reading culture in and around the school. It will be a great opportunity to put in to practice some of the successful strategies that have worked at my current school, as well as try out some new ones.

We'll be speaking to children, staff and parents about how they feel about reading and what they would like to do to move things forward and, from there, we'll try and work out what the first priorities need to be. It's going to be quite a challenge, but there's a real sense among the current staff of the school that it's a place that's about to turn the corner, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to it.

23 ways to create a non-reading school

1. If, by some bizarre twist of fate, an author, poet or storyteller ever visits the school, at least half of the pupils need to be either out on a trip to the local supermarket or attending a phonics catch-up group.
2. Do not model reading in class. Ever. During quiet reading time, make sure you are inputting data to your school's pupil tracking system or tidying up a Geography display.
3. When reading a shared book, do not give out more than one copy for every four children (this includes tatty photocopies). The less time they spend in physical contact with a book, the better.
4. If a child tells you that they spent an hour reading a wonderful book at home but their mum didn't remember to sign their reading record, spend at least thirty seconds looking disapprovingly at them. Remember, it's all about evidence.
5. Ensure at all times that children are reading a book which is the right level for them. They should not be reading books which are too simple or too challenging. Colour-coding and organising by difficulty are effective ways to show a child how good they are at reading.
6. When 'reading for pleasure', children must always make some kind of record of it in their reading journals. Tell them that's what proper readers do.
7. Do not engage with your Schools Library Service, the local library or any kind of children's bookshop. Have as few people with a passion for reading visit the school as possible.
8. Incomplete sets of books in the library and classroom are crucial. Having the Alex Rider series on a shelf with books 1, 3 and 8 missing is great. Point out that the books were only bought ten years ago and that they really should have been looked after better.
9. On World Book Day, be careful to make the emphasis on the costumes the children wear rather than books. Encourage them to spend money on an expensive outfit they will probably only wear once instead of on books they might read several times.
10. Have posters round the school showing children the books that various members of staff are reading. Make sure that they display the same book all year and are never updated.
11. Make it as difficult as possible for children to visit the school library by not staffing it for most of the day. Children should be changing their books once a week, and not more or less frequently. If they have finished a book before their library visit is due, then they must read it again. It must never be accessible before school or after school.
12. Keep old, tatty and out-of date books (e.g. Will Humans Ever Visit The Moon?) and try to spend the least amount possible on new books.
13. If you are reading a class novel, make sure it is the same one you have read for the past five years, especially if you worked in Year Six for that time and are now teaching in Year Two.
14. Ignore poetry completely. Explain to the children that it very rarely comes up in SATs tests these days.
15. However big your classroom is, it isn't big enough for cushions, book corners, author displays, etc.
16. Occasionally tell the children that you really like reading but never, ever be more specific. Do not mention actual books, authors, illustrators, etc.
17. Continually reinforce the message that magazines, comics, newspapers and football programmes are not books and therefore not really proper reading.
18. If you are teaching in Year Six, remember that the only independent reading the children can do after Christmas is past SATs papers.
19. Provide parents with a handy list of differentiated questions they can ask their children when reading at home. Most of them should contain the word 'infer'.
20. Try to make sure that the library has as many other purposes as possible. Parent groups, one to one tuition (which obviously needs to be done in silence). storage of the iPad trollies, music lessons, etc. Be creative!
21. Do not allow the pupils to have any ownership of reading in the school. No pupil librarians, no input into choosing books and no helping with displays.
22. Never hold special assemblies about just books. One on World Book Day is more than sufficient.
23. Five minutes spent at the start of a staff meeting sharing a couple of books that the children have enjoyed (or that you have enjoyed) is five minutes wasted!

This list is by no means fully comprehensive. Please feel free to add your own suggestions.

(By the way, the school I work in has a genuinely wonderful reading culture!)

The Fonz and Malorie Blackman!

I wouldn't normally just post a video link on here, but it's not every day that The Fonz and Malorie Blackman send a video message to your school talking about how wonderful reading is! Huge thanks to our Patron of Reading, John Dougherty, for putting it together.

Class Author

Roald Dahl is a great children's author. Admittedly, he's also responsible for Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator which is, in my opinion, very disjointed and rather boring, but pretty much all of the other books he wrote were wonderful. Virtually every child in Key Stage Two knows his name and most can name at least a few of his books. This also applies to the other 'usual suspects': Jacqueline Wilson, JK Rowling, David Walliams, etc.

However, there are literally hundreds of other great children's authors out there that, without a little guidance, can easily be overlooked by the majority of children. Off the top of my head this includes Sam Gayton, Katherine Paterson, SF Said, Paul Jennings, Jamila Gavin, Josh Lacey and Gill Lewis. It's a very arbitrary list, so please don't pull me up on any wonderful authors that are missing (although do feel free to add to it!).

In order to widen the children's knowledge of authors and poets, about three years ago we decided that each class in the school would have a Class Author. The author would change 4-5 times a year, and would sometimes be selected by the teacher and sometimes by the children. A child joining us in Year 3 and leaving us in Year 6 would then be exposed to the work of at least 20 different authors during their time at junior school, as well as that of all the ones they know about anyway. Three years down the line and the idea is still going strong.

4JB's Class Author

Each class has an author display in their classroom and there is also a school display of current and previous authors outside the library. Revealing the new author is always very exciting and is done in a variety of ways. Some teachers reveal their identity on the class blog or via Twitter and one puts up a photo of the author in his classroom to see if the children can recognise who it is. If they don't get it straight away, he then throws in an occasional clue during the week.

Recent Class Authors (including Mildred D Taylor, Rene Goscinny, Noel Langley, Terry Deary, Michael Rosen and The Brothers Grimm)

Every teacher is given a book budget of approximately £50 for each class author they have during the year so, as time has gone on, the classrooms have become much better stocked with great books. The staff all approach the idea differently. Some have a fixed author slot every week where they find out information about their writer alongside the children, some encourage the class to research the author at home, almost all ensure they find time every day to read one of the author's books. In fact, pretty much anything to raise the profile of the writer and their work. Occasionally the children have emailed the author to let them know that they are their chosen Class Author, share a picture of the classroom display and ask them a few questions. Most of the time, the authors have been really receptive and happy to engage, and one even offered to hold a conversation via Skype with the class.

It's a simple idea that has been very effective. It's noticeably improved the children's awareness of different authors, as well as that of the school staff. At the end of last year, I asked my Year 4 class to list as many authors as they could- they came up with over 50 between them! The fact that there's a new author every few weeks keeps it fresh and the children know that if their current Class Author isn't really their cup of tea, another one will be along pretty soon.

49 ideas to raise the profile of reading in schools

These are just bullet points at the moment but I will put it all into some sort of coherent state whenever I get an opportunity. The ideas are a mixture of what is already happening in my school and my R4P 'wishlist'. Some are directly relevant to the school I work in, but could easily be transferred into any school. The majority are pretty standard practice, although there should be a few in there that you won't have tried before (there's definitely a few I haven't tried yet!).
 

Reading for Pleasure- whole school ideas

Children learn about literature from what the adults about them do about it.

Zahnleiter, 1985

You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books...the best weapons in the world!

Dr Who, 1879

Finding ways to engage children in reading is one of the most effective ways to leverage social change.

OECD, 2002

 

Children

• Whole school questionnaire for pupils to gauge attitudes to R4P- present results to staff
• School book council/reading council- two pupils from each class to attend meetings to talk about how to raise profile of reading
• Lunchtime reading boxes for quiet area in playground
• Regularly share favourite books and poems in assembly
• West Earlham Junior School book awards- each year group to judge a particular category
• Class author/theme- opportunities needed for classes to feedback to each other
• Class ‘book talk’ sessions (at least once a week)
• Extreme reading photo competition (pupils, staff and parents)
• Weekly fifteen minute DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time (pupils and staff)- staff as reading role models (newspapers, magazines, graphic novels, etc)
• Lunchtime story and poetry clubs
• Book club (and, equally importantly, Not A Book Club, where pupils read poems, magazines, comics, graphic novels, etc)
• Class and individual rewards for using Reading Records
• Book swap box (‘wandering’ book) for pupils and staff- reception area?
• ‘Mr Green is reading…’ posters to also include all non-teaching staff
• Daily class storytime
• Reading cafes
• Poem of the Day- to be performed by children and staff- classes to make anthologies of poems, short stories, etc
• Book/author quiz- Between classes (families involved?)
• ‘I am reading.…by....’ badges (pupils, staff, visitors)
• Shadowing national book awards/competitions (Carnegie, Blue Peter, etc)
• Out and about- book festivals, author visits in other schools, bookshops, libraries, etc
• Video and audio books reviews- upload onto class blogs, etc
• Pair up with a class from another school to swap reading recommendations
• Celebrate World Book Day, National Poetry Day, Non-Fiction Week, etc

Staff

• One staff member per week to share a book in staff meeting (2-3 minutes)
• Regularly share favourite books and poems in assembly
• Patron of Reading- Who to replace John Dougherty at the end of his tenure?
• As well as regular visits from PoR (2-3 times a year), at least three visits a year from other authors or poets
• Host meetings for SLS KS2 Fiction Group
• Mystery Book/Random Read/Blind Date With A Book
• Staff reading interviews by children (to be filmed or recorded on Audioboom)
• R4P INSET- either at NCBC or invite Marilyn to us
• Review folder/space on wall (Reading Wall), bank of ideas for staff to find out about new authors, poets, etc- reviews from Carousel, Books For Keeps, etc.

Parents / Community

• Dads & Lads reading group (or similar)- focus on dads
• Make it possible to borrow books from the school library
• Events to be held jointly with WEIS (paired reading, etc) and CAN (especially library)
• Community- West Earlham’s Favourite Books, ‘flash’ reading events.
• Regular involvement with local library
• Parent readers/Reading champions
• Home/school liaison (My child loves reading xxxxx. What else will they enjoy?)- available in library one evening a week?
• Information pack for parents- local libraries, websites, a few recommended books for each Year Group
• ‘New for old’- parents to bring in books their children have outgrown and swap them

Environment / Resources

• Library- ‘If you liked… then try…’ posters and bookmarks (Recommend for a friend)
• Library and classroom- List of author/poet websites
• Library- football magazines, comics, etc- use car boot sales, jumble sales, etc to pick up
• Posters of new books, etc up all around the school (eg sport books in the changing rooms) and in classrooms
• Posters of staff reading
• Posters of ‘cool’ kids reading
• Books from other cultures, dual language books

The Daily Poem

We've only introduced the Daily Poem into the classroom in the last couple of weeks but it's really fired up the kids' enthusiasm for reading and performing poetry. There is a 'signing-up' sheet by the classroom door where they can put their names if they would like to share a poem they have chosen with the class the following week. We then free up a five-minute slot, usually straight after lunch, where they perform their poems. The only requirement is that the children agree to spend at least five minutes a day during the week before they perform practising their poems.

For the first week, it was modelled by the adults in the class. We talked about why we had chosen the poem and how we had practised it to help improve our performance. There was no time spent on analysing words, rhythm, structure or meaning; it was read (or recited), the class had a minute or two to talk about it with their friends, and then we moved on.

The sheet was left blank for week two. After a day or so, nobody had signed-up and I was starting to think the idea had flopped. During lunchtime, two girls came in and asked if they could perform a poem together. Hooray! They added their names to the list and went off giggling to practise their poem. In the middle of afternoon registration, one of the least confident readers signed-up, planning to read a poem that she had written herself (called The Witch And Her Cat). By the end of the following day, the sheet had been completely filled and the children were asking if we could have two Daily Poems so that they could all have a go.

After performing their poem, the children are then allowed to write the name of the poem and the poet on one of the classroom windows using a board pen (check this rubs off first!). It's another way to familiarise them with the names of different poets (and they love the fact that it's a bit naughty!).

So far we've had Michael Rosen (numerous times), Spike Milligan, Brian Moses, Valerie Bloom, Josh Seigal, Julia Donaldson and a couple of the kids' own poems. The sheet is currently full for the first week back after half-term and the kids have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It's great to see them wandering around the playground with a book of poetry and it's helping to further raise the profile of poetry across the school. We've paired up with a Year Six class, and once a week the children go and perform to each other. We have also recorded some of the performances using Audioboom, adding them to the book blog so that any interested parents can have a listen.

http://wejsbookblog.blogspot.com