Phil Beadle's How to Teach series.
In Reading for Pleasure, Kenny Pieper has gathered a range of
tried-and-tested strategies to get kids reading, and enjoying it. We
hear too often that kids don't read any more: Kenny thinks it should be
every teacher's mission to prove this isn't true. In a squeezed
curriculum it can be tempting to accept pupils' lack of reading and make
excuses that there is not enough time to give to the 'luxury' of
personal reading. Teachers do this at our peril. Reading is the
essential building block of further literacy development as well as a
skill, hobby and habit that we can take with us forever.
Kenny Pieper takes the act of reading for granted, as many - but sadly
not all - adults do. You're reading this right now. However, this isn't
the case for everyone. Kenny teaches kids whose lives are terrifying
obstacle courses of reading-related problems. They know they struggle
with reading so they try to avoid reading at all costs. They leave
school, not merely unaffected by this strange reading thing, but saddled
with a great deal of emotional baggage about being an outsider, even
more entrenched in a belief that reading is for others more intelligent
than them. Then there are the children who can read perfectly well, but
chose not to, unconvinced of the importance of reading in their lives.
What difference does it make to them? We have to answer that question in
school. We have a duty to put an end to illiteracy and aliteracy. Kids
need reading role models and, as a teacher, that role model is you. You
may be the only adult who that reluctant reader will ever see reading.
Teachers are critical in giving all children the gift of being able to
read well and to value reading.
Topics covered include: the author's personal reading journey, how
reading enabled him to become the first person in his family to go to
university and convinced him that fostering a love of reading is his
moral duty as an educator, illiteracy and aliteracy, reluctant readers,
book reviews, prioritising personal reading by devoting ten minutes each
lesson to it, habitual reading, the reading environment, interest
inventories, technology, e-readers, Accelerated Reader programmes,
recommended reading, building a class library, bookmarks, book tweets,
book speed-dating, libraries, librarians, literacy and class inequality,
parental involvement, podcasting, reading records, reading dialogue
journals, the rights of the reader, reading aloud, silent reading and
literacy and gender, amongst others.
The benefits we can all reap when kids become confident readers who read
for pleasure are obvious. Discover strategies which will: get kids
talking about books, get them thinking about books, get them reading
books, encourage independent reading, develop literacy skills and
establish a classroom culture where reading is expected and celebrated.
Suitable for primary and secondary teachers, leaders and SENCOs, or just
anyone with an interest in or responsibility for getting kids to read.
