Ideas for encouraging peer recommendations in the classroom

Children who are encouraged to read and who have books suggested to them by their peers are significantly more likely to enjoy reading and say that it is ‘cool’ than those who don’t (National Literacy Trust surveys, 2008-2016). Creating a culture of peer recommendation in a classroom takes time and effort, but the results are definitely worth the investment. To hear a child say to a classmate ‘You just have to read A Library Of Lemons because it’s the best book ever written’ or 'I absolutely loved Once and think you will too' is a magical feeling for a teacher who's trying to create a reading culture, especially when the conversation is reciprocated a few days later. When it starts to happen on a regular basis, you know you've created a class of genuine readers! As an added bonus, it's a great way for teachers and librarians to hear about new books. About half of the children's books that I read have been suggested to me by pupils.

Year 6 recommendations

One of the easiest, but most powerful, ways to get children sharing and discussing books with each other is by being a ‘reading teacher’ and by recommending books to the class yourself (if you're not already aware of Teresa Cremin's Teachers as Readers report, then you need to explore it as a matter of urgency!). Try and find the time to talk about at least a couple of books each week; tell them why you enjoyed it and why you think they will, compare it to similar books they may know, read them the blurb and an exciting extract and then leave it somewhere prominent in the classroom. It will definitely have been borrowed by the end of the day! Once the children see you recommending books that you’ve actually read (as opposed to recommending books where you’ve just whizzed through the blurb) they’ll start to do it as well.

Although being forced to regularly write book reviews can quickly kill a love of reading, it doesn’t always have to be so painful. A two sentence mini-review, written in a brightly coloured gel pen on a fluorescent sticky note and then stuck on the front cover of the book, is a lovely way to share recommendations. Writing Twitter reviews to be shared with other classes also helps give the children a real audience for their opinions.

Mini-reviews

Our school book council (which is currently made up of one child from each class in the school) have a regular slot in assembly where they share books that they have enjoyed or promote new books that have come into the school library. Although it was originally only the council members who recommended books, other children often ask if they can talk about a book they’ve just finished because it was so good. Some of our Year 5 and 6 children also visit Key Stage 1 regularly and share books that they read at that age. Both groups of children take the sessions very seriously; the older children put a lot of thought into selecting the books that they take with them, and the younger children listen carefully and enjoy asking questions about the books.

Reading to Key Stage 1

When a child has particularly enjoyed a book, encourage them to fill in an 'If you liked reading...then try...' bookmark which can be passed on to another child (templates are easily available online). We have an exercise book in our reading area called 'If you liked reading...', where lots of children's authors are listed. The children then update the book by recommending similar authors (eg If you liked reading the Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz, then try the Jimmy Coates books by Joe Craig or the Young James Bond books by Charlie Higson and Steve Cole). It's great to see how often they refer to this while choosing their next book!

Filming short videos where children talk about favourite books can be made very easily and shared widely. We currently swap recommendations with a primary school in New Zealand. Although there are a lot of similarities in their choices, there are also several books which are only published in one of the countries, which has led to interesting discussions about books from different cultures and countries. The link to our most recent video can be found here.

We’ve also introduced a ‘Reader of the Week’ where the winner is chosen by their classmates (with a little guidance, as and when necessary…Oh, I wonder who it might be this time? Maybe Sean, who read beautifully to his little sister last night). We then add a photo of the child holding their favourite book to our display and the other children their own ‘Well Done’ comments. It definitely helps raise the status of reading in the classroom and helps make being a reader cool.

It will take time for children to develop the confidence to share their reading preferences with their classmates but, once it’s firmly embedded in the classroom routine and ethos, it’s a very powerful tool to help engage all readers and can make a huge difference to the value that they put on reading.

Class Reading Timeline

This year, I'm teaching the same class as I taught last year. In fact, I started at the school with this class when they were in the final term of Year 4 and they're now in Year 6. There are a couple of downsides to this (it's virtually impossible to come up with anything new to say at Parents' Evening that you haven't already mentioned in the previous five!), but there are also a huge number of positives. We've built up a wonderful shared reading history over the past two years, and I can confidently say that I know their individual reading habits inside out.

Earlier in the year we created individual and family reading histories, and the natural progression was to spend time working together to produce our class reading history or reading timeline. We started by talking about all the books that we'd read together and the shared reading experiences that we'd had. These included author visits from Paul Cookson, Matt Dickinson, Pippa Goodhart and Ali Sparkes, judging various book awards (Peters Book Of The Year and Royal Society Young People's Book Prize) and whole school celebrations of reading. We also looked through our class Twitter feed and at the various interactions we'd had with parents, authors, publishers, etc, about reading.

We then thought about which books or authors had created a big buzz and set off a reading 'chain reaction' around the room. In Year 4, everybody was reading the Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face books by John Dougherty. In Year 5 it was all about the Cirque du Freak series by Darren Shan and, so far in Year 6, the most popular books have been the Once family by Morris Gleitzman (he doesn't like to call them a series apparently) and Wonder by RJ Palacio. There's also been a real surge of interest in reading graphic novels this year, caused by one of the pupils enjoying Smile by Raina Telgemeier and then getting all of her friends to read it.

  

The class split into small groups and planned how they were going display their timeline. Most went with using a long piece of wallpaper and photographs alongside written thoughts and reflections, although one group very keen to produce a PowerPoint. It took a couple of afternoons, but we were all were absolutely delighted with how they turned out. Each group took their finished reading timelines round to show the some of the other classes, and they're all currently on display in the school library.

In terms of impact in the classroom, one of the recommendations from the UKLA Teachers as Readers report was to develop pedagogy which fosters 'inside text talk' (spontaneous, informal and child led) about reading and books, and which supports children in creating 'positive reading identities'. The conversations that took place about books, authors and reading between the groups were an absolute joy to be part of. When you overhear a child explaining to an engrossed group of friends the similarities and differences between The Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd, then you know it's been time well spent.

Children's author knowledge

After a hectic, but very enjoyable, few weeks travelling around the country to various literacy conferences and helping organise a R4P TeachMeet event in Fakenham, I've finally found some time to write a blog post. I recently raised the question in the Reading for Pleasure Facebook group of how many authors an 'average' child in Year 5/6 would be able to name. I thought that most of them would know the 'Big Guns' (Roald Dahl, David Walliams, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson and possibly JK Rowling), but how many others? The general consensus from the teachers, librarians and authors in the group was that most children in Year 5/6 would aware of the above names but not too many others.

Out of curiosity, I asked my class to list as many writers as they could in five minutes, without any help from their friends and without looking at the bookshelves. We ended up spacing ourselves out on the field. The lowest score was 2 (Michael Rosen and Jonny Duddle) and the highest score was 27. There were a few other scores over 20, most children got to about 15, although several were much lower. As we've spent the last four terms totally focused on creating a reading culture in the class, (I think) I was pleased with the results. The score of 2 can be explained away by the fact that the child spent most of the five minutes making a daisy chain, which she then gave to her best friend. It would be interesting to know how these scores actually compare to other similar aged classes.

            

              

I thought I'd better have a try myself (results below). There was a good male/female balance, but I found myself thinking of lots of great books whose author I couldn't remember. In fact, Rob Smith (The Literacy Shed) raised this- does it actually matter if children don't know many authors' names, as long as they know great books? Teresa Cremin from The Open University argued 'I think knowing authors is important for developing preferences and thus enabling volition and agency as readers - and also supports choice at bookshelves as readers hunt spines for more of the same.'

So, where do children at primary school get their knowledge of authors? Again, I asked my class for their thoughts, and they came up with their teacher, their parents, their peers and the shops. We aren't fortunate enough to have a school librarian, so most of them wouldn't be aware of how much guidance a good one could offer.

From my experience, it seems as if less time is now spent on developing knowledge of children's literature on teacher training courses. As Karen Argent said 'In my experience teaching at a university for the last 15 years, quite a lot of younger students training to teach do not read children's books or are particularly interested in them. Too much emphasis on literacy at the expense of literature when they have been at schools themselves perhaps? So, unless they then experience good inspirational stuff when they are training and/or on teaching practice - the fire doesn't get lit. I find it quite depressing...'

In the Teachers as Readers report by Teresa Cremin et al, nearly 25% of teachers couldn't name any picture book authors and 22% couldn't name any children's poets. When asked to list six 'good' children's writers, the same names kept coming up again and again (basically the ones at the top of the page). As most teachers admit to relying on their own knowledge of children's literature for decisions about classroom reading, and considering the facts that parental input varies massively from child to child, that peer knowledge is directly related to teacher knowledge and that most big supermarkets tend to stock the same few authors, maybe it's not a surprise that children don't know as many authors as we would expect.