Our school's recent #mydadreads campaign, which was intended to give the children more male reading role models, has just finished. We wanted to show that reading for pleasure is a normal activity for adults, and to encourage more dads to read to, with and in front of their children.
We started by asking dads, step-dads, uncles, grandads, etc, to send us either a photo of them reading at home or a 'dad shelfie'. Most came in directly via Twitter or email, although a few were actually brought in by the children. We then put these up as a display and created a video, which can be found here.
We then asked the children to interview their adult and ask them what reading meant to them. The quality of responses was mixed to be fair. One of the most dispiriting answers was 'My dad says he doesn't have time to read because he's too busy playing Candy Crush', and one of the most positive was 'I love reading because it takes me to new countries, worlds and times. It also allows me to meet a huge variety of interesting people.'
Some dads also came into class to talk about reading they needed to do for work (instruction manuals, maps, contracts, etc), and share some of their favourite books as a child. We finished by having a couple of sessions in the library, where the children could spend time reading with their dads (and obviously eating biscuits). A few wanted to have books that they could read with their children suggested to them, most just wanted to browse and talk about books with their kids.
Feedback from the adults and children was very positive, so after the summer holidays we're kicking off with a #mymumreads campaign.
