3 minute read
For the love of literature
Keeping the love alive in lockdown
Jon Biddle, English lead and NEU rep at Moorlands Primary, Norfolk, is passionate about fostering a love of reading for pleasure. Here he shares ideas for keeping children engaged with books while at home.
THIS issue’s article is obviously rather different from the one that I originally intended to write, and I do hope that you are all keeping as safe and well as possible under the circumstances.
When we realised that our school would be closing to the majority of pupils for an extended period of time, we wanted to ensure that pupils would all have access to books while at home.
School library stripped bare
The first thing we did was to remove all lending restrictions from our school library and invite each pupil to take home between six and eight books. Although this meant that the library was stripped virtually bare and that some books might never be seen again, this was preferable to having them sitting unread on shelves, possibly for months on end.
Along with most other schools, we are remotely setting work for the children to complete, but our main focus has been on finding ways to keep them engaged with reading. Even if they do nothing else over the next few weeks, it is important that they read regularly. As well as the academic benefits, reading has been shown to have huge positive effects on mental health and wellbeing.
A-Z lists, read-alongs and mash-ups
One of the most popular tasks we have set so far has been to ask pupils to recreate the cover of a favourite book. Taking into consideration individual circumstances, we allowed them to do it using whatever media they wished. Some chose to use technology and some chose to use pen and pencil. The covers were then uploaded to our class blog.
Other simple reading-based activities we have shared include making A-Z lists of authors, book titles and characters, encouraging children to read stories with relatives via video calls, reorganising family bookshelves according to colour or genre, and drawing ‘mash-up’ comic strips that feature characters
Making lists of authors, book titles and characters; Michael Rosen, whose YouTube channel features hundreds of poems; and recreating the cover of a favourite book from more than one book (When The Gruffalo Met Lord Voldemort was my favourite).
Our older children are also being encouraged to take part in remote ‘read-alongs’ with their classmates and to share thoughts online about what they’re reading. Discussing books, even via the internet, is an important part of the reading process.
Free online story sessions
For children whose access to books is limited, we ensured parents were made aware of the large number of authors, poets and illustrators running free sessions and storytimes online. For example, Michael Rosen’s YouTube channel has more than 400 fantastic poems to enjoy.
My school has also ‘topped-up’ the reading diet of some of our more vulnerable children by including a selection of books alongside deliveries of food parcels.
Many more suggestions, including tips for parents on reading aloud and strategies for developing online reading communities, can be found on the Open University Reading for Pleasure website, in the Supporting Reading at Home section (researchrichpedagogies.org/ research/supporting-rah).
Reading for mental and emotional health
Unfortunately, it is inevitable that there will be some children who do very little reading over the next few weeks. However, if schools can help keep the reading fire burning in as many pupils as possible, they will be in a more stable place, both mentally and emotionally, upon their eventual return to school. This surely has to be our main goal as teachers over the coming months. Follow @jonnybid
