We LOVE Reading (for pleasure!)

It is an educational truth universally acknowledged that reading is of paramount importance to a child's success throughout their school years and beyond.  For that reason, we have worked hard over recent years to get children reading and to help them to enjoy it.  Here are some of the things we have done to raise the profile of reading and encourage children to do it and enjoy it.

Independent Reading Books - Recommending and buying

As in most schools, all our pupils have a book which they are reading independently.  In Y4, that is normally a short chapter book, perhaps with a few pictures.  We are always talking about which books children are reading, recommending them other books similar to those they've enjoyed and eyeing opportunities to buy new books for them to read.  Many boys last year enjoyed reading a Hank Zipzer book which someone picked up from the library van.  A few this year loved it too so we bought them the whole set.  Once children started reading them, the love for Hank Zipzer spread like wildfire and I'm not sure there are many boys in my class who haven't read at least one of them.  I find that once particularly vocal members of the class get hooked in a series, it is very easy to persuade their wide circle of friends to read those books as well.  Boys have particularly enjoyed the Time Hunters, Jack Stalwart, Football Academy, Foul Play and Percy Jackson series this year. Many conversations about these books have encouraged more children to read and enjoy them. 

Movie Books for Class Readers

Each half-term, we read a book which has a movie.  I read this to children at different points during the day.  It is protected time and the aim is to finish the book in six weeks.  We finished every single one this year.  The only way to do that is to value highly the time spent on it and prioritise it.  At the end of the half term, we sit down together as a year group and watch the movie.  This leads to interesting discussions about the comparisons between the books and the movies, particularly the choices made in the movie of Matilda.  

Reading Areas and Bookshelves - Beg, borrow, steal!

Every primary school (hopefully) has a dedicated reading area and most classrooms will have one bookshelf or reading corner each.  These are vital when it comes to encouraging children to love reading.  However, it is the texts on the bookshelves rather than the aesthetics of the area which make a real difference to children's enjoyment of reading.  This year, our reading coordinator organised two book fairs to generate the maximum possible profit for teachers to use to fill their bookshelves. These have allowed us to buy appropriate texts for our year group shelves using this list which was compiled from teachers' suggestions.  As a year four teacher, I am always going to other classrooms to find books that some of my pupils would love to read.  The look on a child's face is priceless when you tell them you "stole" the book from a year five or six bookshelf just because they might like it.  That alone is often motivation enough for them to start reading the book.   

Our Favourite Books

Each year, we read our favourite (children's) book to our classes.  That gives us the chance to share our passions for a book with them and discuss reasons why we think it's the best.  I read my class Scribbleboy by Philip Ridley; here's why I love it. 

Book Bingo

This is an idea I had during a frustrating moderation meeting.  We started handing out Book Bingo activities and giving children a star for completing 4-in-a-row.  At the end of the year, we held a big raffle with all the stars put into a bucket and children chosen to win prizes.  I thought this would be something relatively boring for children but they were completely inspired by it and, as you can see from the stars on our display boards, many rose to the challenge.  One child even created a Book Bingo photo montage of him completing one of the grids. 

Blue Book Bingo photo montage. Image used with parent's permission.

Author Visits / Giving Books Away

Nothing inspires reading and writing more than a visit from an author, especially one whose books you are reading together.  We combined budgets through year groups and the English curriculum and invited the wonderful Caroline Lawrence to come to visit us and share her expertise.  When her books were really cheap in sets, we gave each child one and she graciously signed every one.

Book Amnesties

This year, we have started something new to ensure our bookshelves are always full.  We discovered that some families had many books belonging to the school at home but were too embarrassed to return them as there were sometimes up to ten books.  To solve this, some of our school council set up a table on the playground for a week before and after school.  This became our Book Amnesty table, where parents and pupils could return books that belong to the school or certain teachers with no questions asked.  During our first amnesty, hundreds of books were returned to the school but many families donated old books to the school as well.  The school council then decided which year group each book should be returned to.  This has become a regular occurrence which helps us make sure we have a big selection of stories for our children to choose from.  

Take The Time To Talk - know your kids and know the books

If a child was struggling to know what to read, I would do one (or some) of the following. 

 - recommend a book based on their likes/dislikes
 - give them 2 appropriate books and suggest they read the first chapter of each and choose one (or we'll find a different one)
 - go the library or another classroom together and find some books similar to those they've enjoyed
 - suggest a child who is similar in their likes and ability to talk to the child about books they'd recommend
 - ask a child they admire or one of their friends to recommend some books to try
 - compose an email to staff members (with the child) to request a specific book and then buy it from our budget if no one had it.

Making time for such conversations isn't easy but the long-term benefits far outweigh any short-term minutes lost.  Generally, I encourage kids to "try before you buy" and I never force them to finish a book.  Discussing which books everyone is reading together is important too; we do this for the register sometimes.  Also, engaging parents in their child's choice of books is a powerful way of helping pupils enjoy reading. This is something I'm hoping to explore further this coming year.  Watch this space...

Further Reading (about reading!)

You may be interested to read this post about how teachers at The Wellington Academy have raised the profile of reading in their secondary setting.  

Also, Rhoda (a friend and former colleague) has written this post about what she'll be doing this year to enhance engagement with reading. 

Finally, this post was written with KS1 children in mind and has some more ideas for encouraging kids to read.

Education Graveyard

At the end of July, I will have completed a mere five years in teaching.  It sounds like a short amount of time but I can't say it has passed exceptionally quickly.  Recently, I came to sort out my cupboard in a bid to locate a "Little Miss Bossy" book which we use to teach imperative verbs.  In sorting through some of the items in my "teaching resources" and "displays" boxes, I started to do something which teachers rarely do - throw things away.  All of these items I had kept "just in case".  However things have changed in my classroom in the last five years so much that these are no longer worth keeping.  Some of the changes are down to my classroom practice and beliefs about education.  Other changes have been imposed from the government down.  I am sure you can work out which are which!  So here I present my Education Graveyard of the last five years.  

Ability Groups

I have written previously about how I was an ability group obsessive.  Over the last five years, I have gone from having ability groups for all core subjects to having no ability groups whatsoever.  Everything is taught whole-class in mixed-ability groups.  Movement is fluid so children can have adult support when needed and complete paired and group work successfully.  Read more about what I do instead here.  These velcro grouping charts were satisfying to throw away as I remember hours spent trimming, laminating, trimming again and velcro-backing the names that went on each set.  Also, notice below the death of "Literacy" and the rebirth of "English".  

Maths ability groups for display

Reading and writing ability groups for display

Connectives - RIP

The death of the humble connective. OK. Perhaps not so much a death but a retirement from duty.  Instead we welcome to the scene: conjunctions.  What's the difference? Who knows?! Why the change? Who knows!? I wonder, if we had a change of government, whether they'd rename them again.  It was too much of a long shot to keep these. Bin. 

Connectives display cards

Guided Reading Organisation Materials

If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that I stopped teaching Guided Reading in favour of whole-class lessons nearly three years ago.  Despite this, I apparently still kept my master timetable, monitor cards and information sheets.  We have gone on a long journey with whole-class reading and I have documented every step in this blog post.  Needless to say, these didn't require much thought before they made it to the dustbin. 

Organising 5 x 25min sessions of Reading carousel activities

Assessment Foci

APP was far from perfect. However, what it did provide for us, in all core subjects, was an overarching focus for sets of our objectives.  These seemed fairly logical to me and were easy to differentiate.  Unfortunately, the new curriculum provided nothing of the sort so we had to cobble up our own.  

Reading AFs

Word Wall

I feel like pre-made word walls have had their day.  Now this may be because I work in a school with a strict nothing-stuck-on-walls policy.  Or it may be because I prefer for displayed words to be more flexible and come from the children's ideas.  I still enjoy using Scribble HQ - my writing working wall and so no longer have a use for these resources.  

The Word Wall bricks

As it turns out, I never found the "Little Miss Bossy" book so I'll have to keep searching for that! 

Scribble HQ - Writing Working Wall Display

Inspired by FootieFanMiss' Working Walls, this year I have kept a writing display as a fluid way of recording what we are learning and to help children improve their writing.  This is definitely a work-in-progress but the kids are really enjoying using it at the moment and it is having more impact than many of my displays have before!  This short, photo-heavy post will be a quick tour of what's on there and why!  To start with, this photo shows the wall as a whole.  I've called it "Scribble HQ" after the the location in my favourite children's book, Scribbleboy by Phillip Ridley.  I tend to read part or all of this book to every class so they understand the link! 

We are really focusing, in year 4, on word types so we have some mini word - clouds.  Some of them are pre-made but most are the children's ideas, sometimes with names or initials to give them ownership of the words.  

There is a space for our Alan Peat sentence of the week.

Next to this are some examples of the Alan Peat sentences in the books we have read as a class.  The children have got really good about pointing these out as we're reading so I try and bookmark them and write them up! 

When children bring in work which they've done at home linked to our writing, that goes on Scribble HQ too. 

I can use the display to address any little misconceptions which are consistent across the class.  Here you can see they are struggling to differentiate between these two words so this should remind them, complete with my lovely stick men! 

These post-it notes have been added this week because we are working on inverted commas for speech.  I stole some words instead of "said" from children's work, wrote it on a speech bubble and put their initial on it.  We'll add to these over the next few weeks so that children can have a variety to choose from. 

As I said, this is just a start and something I'm experimenting with this year.  I was a bit hesitant at first as I was unsure that it would be used by the kids and was worried it would take forever to do.  However I've found most of the content can be added in lessons and the kids use it all the time! 

UPDATE July 2015:

This is how the Scribble HQ display looks at the end of the year (minus my finger  and stapler - sorry!).  There are a few additions that are probably quite unclear:

th (top left) - lots of my class use f or v instead of sticking their tongue out for th. Cue a quick doodle to model it correctly. 

cos > because (at the bottom left) - I'm trying to counteract this lazy speech.

Tricky Spellings (top in the middle) - I just keep adding to this when particularly hard spellings crop up. 

TiP ToP paragraphs (top right) - just a quick reminder. 

Prefixes and suffixes (top left) - trying to make this part of their everyday language. 

Inspired By Pinterest 2 - Displays

1 - Starring Board

I thought this pin showed a really great board for introducing my movie theme. Each child is holding a clapper board and, soon to be displayed is a book with information about the "cast"! (I've blanked out faces for anonymity).

2 - Reading Display

There are many of these on Pinterest so I took inspiration from this pin and this pin to create a reading display complete with question prompts and links to the reading AFs.  I learned to make the spotlights using this pin. There is a section of books on the bookshelf that are books of movies or books that have been made into movies.  The children asked if they could bring their own in if they had them.

3 - Movie Jobs

Finally, this display shows the jobs for the class set out as a cast and crew board.  Inspiration came from this pin and this pin.