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I have fallen back in love with reading, note that I didn’t say reading for pleasure. What exactly is reading for pleasure – escapism? adventure? isn’t all reading, for pleasure of some sort? When I started researching and devouring every blog and insert I could get my grubby little hands on to adapt and enhance our reading strategy – I enjoyed it. I got pleasure from researching and noting strategies to trial in my classroom. I would contact the head teacher and mull over ideas, he would send me more research and guide me in the right direction, is this not reading for pleasure? is reading full stop not reading for pleasure?

I want to entice the children in my school and create a real buzz and reading for pleasure climate. How do I intend to do that you say – well during this past school year, I started taking books off the shelf home to read – there are some amazing books on our shelves, I dare you to have a look. I often look at the bookshelf in school, the books on the floor left strewn much to my annoyance and wonder, how do children pick a book off the bookshelf to read? I mean we all have such different tastes – I have some pupils who love reading Percy Jackson and are all about the Greek gods, I also have children whose eyes lit up when we commenced our talk for writing unit on suspense writing! there are others who enjoy Diary of the Wimpy kid and The Dork Diaries.

I would come in Monday morning full of excitement “if you are looking for a book to read, this one is brilliant….” I would tell them a little bit about it and through my enthusiasm and much to my delight when I asked who wants to read it next a load of hands went soaring to the sky, result! There I knew the answer to enticing children to read more, to stretch themselves further and to find a love of reading – adult recommendations. I have created in line with my new upcoming role of reading lead a few school and classroom based book displays (see slideshow above). They want to read what we read, they want to be recommended books that they will enjoy. How will they know if they will like a book without someone saying “hey this book is for you, if you like……then you will love this!”

I can’t just pull any book of the shelf spine side to me and go I will love that, I look at reviews, the blurb, understand the genre – children don’t have this sophistication yet! They tend to find and stick to a series they know or what the adults around them buy for them.

I watched the leaving assembly for Y6, in our school we have a great initiative whereby pupils leaving, donate a book of their choice to the school library – a fantastic idea with one flaw in my eyes. Most of the books donated were David Walliams and Diary of a Wimpy Kid – my heart sank a little – a wasted opportunity. While these books certainly have a place and are great reads and I have no argument against them, I would have liked to have seen more of a variety of books donated. There are some amazing books out there like Katherine Rundell’s The Explorer, The boy at the back fo the class and Skellig by David Almond, which can be shared and enjoyed by adults and children alike, offering great examples of writing to be magpied.

My question to you is what does reading for pleasure mean to you? how do you instil and foster a reading for pleasure climate at your school?

Why do we need a reading strategy?

Reading fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Reading fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. A child begins to comprehend a text once they can read at a speed of 90 wpm. SATS analysis shows that the amount of words children need to read in the allocated time (15 minutes) has risen drastically from 1,855 (2014) to a staggering 2,168 (2019), this means by year six children need to be reading in excess of 145 words per minute. A sound reading strategy is therefore essential to any school curriculum.

Existing reading strategy

Prior to the 2018/19 academic year, we didn’t have structured reading lessons, we had the carousel type guided reading lessons that every teacher dreads. Pupils are grouped by ability, the teacher sits with the weakest readers, trying to guide and listen to them whilst being interrupted constantly or distracted as the room erupts into chaos.

New reading strategy

Luckily this past year saw none of these types of lessons – our curriculum received a much needed make-over. We had a reading strategy with reading lessons! We made the move to whole-class guided reading and had some amazing new books to work with. The week looked something like this:

Monday: teach tier 2 vocabulary from text

Tuesday: adult reads text to pupils, modelling prosody

Wednesday: pupils answer literal retrieval questions

Thursday: pupils answer inference questions

Friday: pupils summarise the chapter

While this was a vast improvement I still felt it was missing something, the children soon got bored with such a prescribed layout and I didn’t feel it was supporting those ‘weaker readers’, if anything it put them further behind. I felt we were teaching children how to answer certain question types but with no real engagement with the text, they weren’t internalising the text.

I began researching how to support ‘weaker readers’- improve reading fluency and language comprehension. I decided to trial a few changes in my classroom first before rolling it out as a whole school strategy. A lot of our new ideas came from Soloman Kingsnorth’s blog, which you can read here.

Updated reading strategy

Children need to know a whopping 95% of the words they read in order to understand a text, therefore it is crucial that vocabulary instruction is explicit and taught through context. This also means that pupils need to have a good understanding of the world (general knowledge). Unfortunately we can’t predict the topics that will appear in assessments so we need to utilise our class reading books effectively, widening pupils general knowledge and explicitly teach them everything we want them to know about a book prior to reading it. This includes the synopsis, main characters, setting – any geographical and historical relevance. In the time it takes pupils to answer ten questions, you can tell them thirty things about a book. Ditch the pre-reading questions and predictions.

The aim of our new reading strategy is for pupils to create what Jane Oakhill defines as ‘mental models’ of texts in order to understand the next book they read. Our new strategy is not a prescribed one, it is book-centred and depends upon what the book lends itself to, take Holes by Louis Sachar, the book is about a boy (Stanley) who is sent to a detention camp for boys instead of prison. While there, Stanley must dig holes, it is gruelling work, that ‘builds character’. In order for children to comprehend ‘Holes’ and why it is difficult and ‘builds character’ they first need to understand that the story is set in Texas. Not many children will have the necessary general knowledge required to comprehend the book, unless we explicitly teach it.

Our updated reading structure looks something like this:

Explicitly teach geographical, historical content along with plot, story type, main characters and setting prior to reading. Use maps, videos, sound effects and dual coding schemas (see Oliver Caviglioli’s book DUAL CODING WITH TEACHERS) to avoid overloading working memory and aid retention.
Adult reads to pupils, modelling prosody at a fluid pace. Pupils follow along with a ruler and their own text to minimise distraction and maximise impact.
Explicitly teach vocabulary in context – use graphic organisers, explore etymology and morphology of words to ensure understanding.
Summarise a chapter or key points through the use of images and notes and model converting these into a written answer.
Check pupils learning through questioning, be it verbal or written this should be a quick check to make sure everyone is onboard.

Our reading strategy is constantly evolving, please check back to see how we are getting on!