Primary and Secondary
Feature: Coming Out of The Reading Closet
Coming Out of The Reading Closet
How to raise the profile of reading in your school Alison Powell reports on a whole school project that aimed to get everybody reading – and succeeded! Your English teacher obviously does it. Your head of school does it too. Your favourite Science teacher, the school janitor and your PE teacher do it (though you’re not sure whether they do it together). They do it their bedrooms, on park benches and even in the bath. Turns out most of your friends do it as well. Sometimes at night, in secret, under the covers ... there’s even a rumour that the school guinea pig is at it. Perhaps it’s time you owned up too. It’s time to admit it: reading is cool.
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Unleashing the geeks At Chew Valley School this past year, readers across the entire school community have been encouraged to come out of the closet and confess to their unbridled love and passion for the printed word. Teachers have been standing up in assemblies: ‘My name is Miss Powell and I am currently reading a brilliant book of poetry by Glyn Maxwell.’ Students have been assisted in setting reading pledges (sometimes in overtly dramatic manners, standing behind their chairs, with hands on hearts). There have even been competitions to see which tutor groups can read the most books in a term and who can raise the most money in a Readathon.
We all know that environment is key. If you create an environment where reading is a normal part of everyday life, and you make it OK to talk about it openly, without fear of being made to feel like a freak or a geek, then more and more people will own up to doing it. In fact such enthusiasm has been drummed up for reading this year at Chew Valley School that according to Gareth James, head of English, ‘students are now swapping recommendations, library lending has skyrocketed and a recent author visit was one of the most popular events we’ve ever had.’ Everyone, it seems, is into reading. The school’s success at raising the profile of reading has mainly been down to a dedicated team of teachers, a willingness on the part of the school community to participate and an overriding positive attitude. You won’t hear any whinging about how ‘it’s a nightmare getting students to read these days’. Instead the repeated mantra is a positive one. ‘Everyone loves reading.’ And the evidence is all around you as you walk through the school corridors. Whether you’re in the Art, Science or English areas, you’ll be able to find out not only which books staff members are reading but also what they have pledged to read over the next term or school year. The Reading Pledge This is largely as result of the whole school Reading Pledge scheme. The Reading Pledge, like most brilliant ideas, is a simple one. Each member of the school community pledges to read something and then displays their pledge publically. Gareth James came up with the idea of pledge when he was off school with a broken ankle. Sofa-bound, and perhaps under the influence of strong painkillers, he decided it would be a great idea to try and read a book a week for the following year. Having enjoyed the sense of personal achievement that his own reading pledge offered, Gareth invited the rest of the school to join him. In a lively assembly, complete with gory x-ray photos, he asked students in every year group to set a reading pledge of their own. Perhaps their own challenge might be to read all the Alex Rider books by the end of the year, or to read one book from cover to cover by the end of the term. It didn’t matter. It was the sense of stepping outside of personal comfort zones that mattered – pledging, in the presence of others, to read something. Copies of the prestigious looking certificate (pictured) were handed to every student during their English lessons. They were encouraged to set themselves a challenge that would require effort and that they would be proud of achieving (i.e. not a book they’d read before or a series of books they could read in an afternoon). These were then displayed around the classrooms and corridors of the English department. Phase two of the Reading Pledge was to invite staff members across the school to join in. They too were issued with Reading Pledge certificates, though in this instance they were laminated so they could be displayed on classroom doors and updated with staff member’s current reads. For example, Jon Walford, head of Science, has pledged to read all of the Man Booker Prize winners. He hasn’t set himself a time limit, but at the moment, he’s tackling The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. ‘Students do ask about what I’m reading,’ he says. ‘Some of them have asked what the Man Booker Prize is. Others will ask what a book is about or whether
I’m enjoying it. It’s opened up the idea that Science teachers read books too!’ Every wall in the school now bears the message that reading is normal and that everybody does it. The Year 7 Reading Challenge The Year 7 Reading Challenge was a project I worked on with the school librarians. The intention was to build on the Reading Pledge and add a little competition to the whole thing. Again the idea was simple: to work in tutor groups to read the tallest pile of books in a term. The results were surprising and exciting. I kicked off the challenge in an assembly to the year group in which I talked about comfort zones and how we can only grow in life by stepping outside of these zones. I explained that their challenge was to work as a whole tutor group to read the height of an average year 7 student (a height that we agreed was 150cm after measuring several students!) in the space of one term. Students were invited to establish rules for the competition. This was kept simple by referring them repeatedly to the comfort zone concept. For example, one student asked whether she could re-read a book for the challenge. ‘No,’ came the response from her peers, ‘that’s in your comfort zone.’ All tutor groups meeting the 150cm challenge would win a certificate and the tutor group who managed to smash through the challenge and read the tallest pile of books overall, would be rewarded with a trophy and a tub of illicit book worm sweets. Having established a new school record, they would also take ownership of the library’s collection of Guinness World Record books for the final school term. Each tutor group was allocated a column in the library where their reading achievements were recorded. As they finished a book, students completed a short questionnaire about characters, setting and plot. Then, satisfied that a book had been properly read from cover to cover, the librarians photocopied the spine
“Students are now swapping book ideas, library lending has sky-rocketed, and a recent author visit was one of the most popular events we’ve ever had.” NATE | Teaching English | Issue 4 | 49
Feature: Coming Out of The Reading Closet
“When the whole community gets on board, we can create a space where we give permission to everyone to stand up and announce to the world: ‘I love reading. It’s cool.’”
and stuck it onto the appropriate tutor group’s pile in a Blue-Peter-esque visual record. The buzz that ensued was tangible. Students who wouldn’t usually read were to be found in the library at lunchtimes examining the tutor group book-ometers. Others started asking the librarians for advice on which books might be slightly outside their comfort zones. Tutor groups came together to work on strategy: was it better to read lots of thinner books, or should one person take on War and Peace? At the end of the competition we also gave out prizes for individual effort to those students who had truly stepped out of their comfort zones. One student in particular read his first complete novel unaided. ‘Miss,’ he whispered, ‘Reading is cool.’ The best accolade for the success of the Reading Challenge came from an overheard conversation between students: ‘I wish we could do the reading challenge again.’ ‘Yeah, I know, it was mint.’ Sponsored Readathon Following on from the Year 7 challenge, English team member Jane Bird, offered to run a Readathon with Year 8. For this, she contacted the marvellous Readathon organisation (http://www.readathon.org/) who supplied her with sponsor forms, video links and stories to help engage students with reading. Again, an aspect of competition was added to the event and visual records of reading were displayed in the school library. Teaching groups were pitted against each other to read the most books and to raise the most funds.
The sponsorship angle of this project meant that the wider community was involved and the closet doors were pretty much blown open. Students reported conversations with grandparents, cousins and neighbours about their reading habits. There was no hiding anymore. It wasn’t just happening in school. Everyone in the world was coming out as a reader. Buddies, shadows and visits In order to offer support and stretch to readers, the school has also run a number of schemes for students at each end of the reading ability spectrum. To support those who feel less confident, the Reading Buddy scheme has been invaluable. Led by Dyslexia Specialist, Charlotte Vartuli, this scheme connects sixth formers with lower school students once a week. Reading together not only encourages an enjoyment of and discussion about books, it also allows older students to take a role of responsibility and care and offers younger students another point of support and contact within the school community. More able readers have been invited to join the library’s Carnegie Shadowing club, reading and discussing the books listed The 2013 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards winners. The school has also invited authors, such as the dynamic David Gatward, to give talks in the school library, again making it OK not only to read, but also to enjoy and be good at writing. Attitude is everything It seems that overall the secret lies in attitude. It’s no use going around lamenting the fact that ‘children can’t be bothered to read’. Instead, as teachers, it is our duty to lead the way, cheering about how great reading is and how excited we are by it. As Chew Valley School has shown, when the whole community gets on board, we can create a space where we give permission to everyone to stand up, loudly and proudly, and announce to the world: ‘I love reading. It’s cool.’
Alison Powell is an English teacher, education consultant and writer, currently working wth Poetry By Heart.
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