The National Literacy Trust released their Children and young people’s reading in 2024 report earlier this month, identifying that just 1 in 3 children aged 8-18 read for pleasure in their free time. This made me think again both about why and how I read and how we can support children to do the same.
I started by revisiting something I wrote for a service at my synagogue celebrating books and reading.
Why do I read:
Because I can - it has not always been easy!
For work
To learn
And teach.
To study
To cook
To be informed
To understand
To empathise
To pray
To imagine
To share new worlds and journeys
To build pictures in my mind.
To relax
To share with friends
Because I can and I enjoy it.
For me reading is an integral part of my life and reading for pleasure is an daily activity. But I was one of those children who statistically was unlikely to read much as an adult. I am ‘significantly’ dyslexic. I use the word ‘significantly’ as my dyslexia has a daily impact on my life impacting focus, spelling, my use of grammar and sentence structure, ability to know left from right, etc, etc. I found learning to read very difficult and did not read with any degree of fluency until comparatively late (about age nine). So how have I ended up an avid reader for pleasure? What supported me to overcome my difficulties and how could this be made helpful to this next generation of children.
Teaching reading
Learning to read in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was introduced to and struggled through virtually every reading scheme published at the time - Peter and Jane, Dick and Dora, Rainbow readers, Beacon Readers, the Griffin Pirate books (even though they were really for boys!) and various others. Some I enjoyed, particularly the Beacon readers which I believe were phonic based but contained good and interesting stories. But these were not the only books I experienced. I was lucky enough to have access at home to a wide range of different books and was encouraged to try, look at and enjoy what I wanted.
In this way, I found the two core texts that taught me to read: JR Unstead’s Looking at History and Raymond Briggs’ book of Nursery Rhymes.
I found both interesting and engaging. I knew and understood the content, so was able to identify key words from the context. This context was supported by relevant illustrations. I was also supported by my mother and her fellow educator and best friend, Margaret Riddell, to ‘read’ and re-read these books with and without support. Slowly I broke the code of how to access the texts which I was then able to use to access other books.
I look now at the reading diet given to our children in schools. The focus is on teaching phonics. Note phonics and not reading. This is constantly tested and re-visited through a range of books using only the phonics sounds the children have mastered plus some tricky words. The vast majority of these books are deathly dull and even with the best teaching most of the phonics lessons are worse- repetitive, formulaic and with a focus on decoding, not understanding what is being read. I am constantly amazed when YR children are expected to decode words like ‘velvet’ which are not in their daily vocabulary and then staff are actively discouraged from engaging in explanations of the word as it will ‘distract’ from the pace of the lesson.
I am not going to argue here about the validity of the focus on synthetic phonics for teaching. That is for another day. However, for me this approach separates the teaching of the reading process and mechanics from any purpose or pleasure. Even those who excel at phonics are often left without an understanding as they move on in their reading journey that they should understand, let alone enjoy, the texts that they are reading. Without comprehension, reading is a mechanical process without meaning.
We do need to give children the tools and structures for learning to read and for many, though not all, this will be a basis in phonics. However the drive to create a culture where reading is only (and can only) be taught through synthetic phonics is making reading an activity where the mechanics of the exercise are given supremacy over the reason for engaging in it at all.
We need to provide children with attractive engaging texts which reflect their interests and experiences. Very few of the books in the phonic schemes do this. Phonics are not the be all and end all of learning to read and for many are actively inhibiting their learning by boring them.
Our attitude to non-printed text
The second issue is about our attitude to non-printed and non-book texts.
To return to my own story. I hope for the majority of readers, my difficulties with writing are hidden. This is because I am lucky enough to live in the age of the computer. I can move and edit text at the touch of a button. I can get the computer to read aloud to me what I have written so I can identify where I have missed out words, word endings and written the words in the wrong order. All this is vital for me as a writer. The same is true for many children. Use of IT to support literacy should not be a ‘treat’ or for best work, but integral to how we support children to access both written and read texts.
We are now live in an age where text is available for reading in a variety of forms including environmental text and instructions. The majority of the texts that most adults access are electronic in some form and on a screen, including messaging and other social media and gaming as well as more traditional ‘books’, newspapers etc. Further, there is a whole world of audio texts. Yet we devalue this when children are learning to read. The focus is on paper books.
This focus means that we are not reflecting children’s experiences of texts, how they are accessed and used out of school. This creates a gap between reading as an exercise in school and reading as experienced in the wider world. Further, it diminishes the value of alternative ways of accessing text. I was surprised on joining Goodreads’ annual reading challenge to realise I could include audio books. Although I listen to tens of these a year, I was not quite counting them as books. But why not? I am accessing and enjoying the text, remembering and engaging with the content. This is reading but in a different way. We need to recognise that it is different, not lesser.
Alternative ways of reading and accessing the written word must be a vital part of children’s reading diet. It allows them to enjoy and access texts beyond their current reading ability and so broaden their experience of books and the world. This is particularly important for those struggling to learn to read as it enables them to enjoy and engage reading with a different form of cognitive effort. This in turn can promote their ability to access more challenging texts as they are already familiar with the context, language and characters. This familiarity provides the support needed to facilitate the challenges of reading.
However, schools’ dismissive attitude to anything beyond traditional books, particularly anything on a screen or listened to without a written text means that children do not see these as reading, so do not build them into their understanding of the ways they can access reading for pleasure.
Further, we often discount the texts that children are accessing for pleasure. The written word is present in many computer games and apps, even online ‘doomscrolling’ often involves the written word. If we recognise and validate this, we can use it as a starting point for exploring other texts rather than turning it into a guilty pleasure. We need to share the texts that are meaningful for the children we teach.
Modelling and sharing
For me as a child, the highlight of the school day was story time - being read to. It remained the highlight of the day for me as a teacher. Yet this vital sharing of texts is becoming more and more squeezed in the curriculum. There might be reading aloud, but it so often a ‘guided text’ or one that is the basis of English lessons. It is a means to an end, not for pleasure.
Sadly, as fewer adults read, fewer children see this being modelled at home. It is not just novels and non-fiction books that are less visible in homes, but there is a decline in print newspapers and magazines. Recipes are followed online. We ask Alexa what channel and time the football is on the television. It is hard to tell when we watch an adult on an electronic device are they watching a video, reading an email, shopping or reading a novel. This reading is hidden so discounted.
We need to share the model of reading on whatever medium it is happening. We have lost the practice of taking time to read both in schools and at home. They are too many other demands. Yet we also know that we need to practice more mindfulness and calming strategies. We need to model that it is OK to stop and consider. For much of my early teaching career, we used to have ERIC (Everyone Reading In Class). It was given different names in different settings. But it gave everyone, staff included, time to stop and enjoy a book. It modelled this as a way of taking time in and from the world. It also modelled reading for pleasure and facilitated discussions about books.
Another element that has disappeared from our classrooms with the drive for phonics and guided reading is children reading one-to-one to a teacher or another adult. This was time consuming, but so important. As a child, reading one-to-one meant that I could hide my reading difficulties. As soon as we were asked to read in a group or worst round the class, my difficulties were made public. Further, I loved the time, attention and sharing of reading to an adult. And I know as a teacher this was not only the time, I did some of my most focused and valuable teaching, but it was a vital part of my welfare support for my class.
If we want children to read for pleasure, we need to model and share what we are reading and how we are accessing it. We need to validate the different ways of reading and the full range of materials that children are choosing to read. Nowhere in my list of reasons for reading is to decode. It is a rare person who regards decoding alone as a reason to read. If we want children to read for pleasure, we need to make it pleasurable, share the pleasure and recognise that it will not look or sound the same for everyone.
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