We need to think twice about reading in secondary schools – Part 2: Making reading matter in school

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Fundamentally, a school is a community – of teachers, support staff, students, parents, governors, and local residents. When we’re considering how to make real impact on our students’ progress in reading, we need to reflect on the status of reading within our community. Is reading important to our teachers, support staff, and parents? In this blog post, I’m going to signpost ways that we can put reading at the heart of school life. Put simply, we can resolve issues with reading motivation and reading skill by developing a culture of reading for pleasure in school.

Spaces and places for reading: the school library

With a background in secondary English teaching, I’m probably biased about the importance of a library to school life! However, students and visitors get a sense of how important reading is from the places and spaces we devote to it in school. In 2017, I conducted a research project on reading for pleasure in a small primary school. The school had a system whereby student librarians managed the library space. Despite the school’s small size, the library was well-stocked and well-used. All of the students I interviewed told me that the library was an important space to them, but that they also liked to read in quiet places on the school playground too. Crucially, the large group of student librarians and the autonomy they were given (to promote favourite books in assembly and request new stock based on recommendations from pupils and teachers) meant that books were talked about all the time. They had social value within the school’s community.

We all understand that schools can be a ‘squash and a squeeze’. Growing student numbers are putting pressure on small classrooms and corridors up and down the country. I know of a number of schools where libraries have shrunk or been removed altogether to make room for new classrooms and offices, or – in the saddest example I can think of – relegated to one lonely book display stand so that a ‘welcoming waiting room’ between the SLT office and main reception could be created. If you’re a senior leader in a school that’s pressed for space, it’s worth thinking carefully about what messages you send to your community with these kinds of decisions. What can seem like a cunning plan that saves space in the short term may have unintended consequences for your school reading culture – and results – in the long term.

If your school library is underused then think of ways to tackle this, rather than reallocating the space. This is even more important if you’re serving schools in area which is associated with economic disadvantage. Research has shown that:

“schools where a quarter or more of the pupils are eligible for free school meals (FSM) are…less likely to have access to a designated school library area on-site than those schools where less than 1 in 10 are eligible” (Great School Libraries, 2019, p. 3).

If you can’t save your library, then consider how you could create physical spaces for books and reading elsewhere. In one school I worked at, we installed bench seating and bookshelves on the landing outside our English department to give students an extra place for pleasure reading (and talking quietly!) – in the same way that primary schools often have ‘book corners’, secondary schools could carve out similar spaces both inside and outside the school. Snape Wood Primary School in Nottingham has set the bar particularly high with this – they have a double decker reading bus on the school playground that is staffed at lunchtimes for pupils and also occasionally after school for parents and siblings too! This is an inspiring approach on many levels. Not only is a double decker bus the perfect place to read, it’s also a familiar space for many children who travel by public transport. I truly believe that this supports children in understanding that reading doesn’t only take place in the classroom, but is something you can do anywhere you can sit!

Advocates for reading: librarians and staff attitudes

I have been very privileged to work with some truly incredible librarians throughout my career. Their impact on students and staff has been astounding, with them:

• making judicious selections of texts to support curriculum subjects as well as pleasure reading

• sourcing subscriptions to subject-specific publications and signposting relevant articles to teaching staff

• coordinating whole-school reading events and initiatives

• running book clubs

• building relationships with the school’s ‘regular readers’ and library visitors

A dear friend and colleague used to specialise in turning around struggling schools as a headteacher. His first act was usually to employ a chartered librarian or teacher librarian, who would run after clubs, interventions and put reading on the map in school.

Whole staff attitudes to reading are also important. Reading is not just the responsibility of English departments in secondary schools or reading leads in primary schools. Reading for pleasure impacts positively on children’s wellbeing and academic progress across a wide range of subjects (Clark and Rumbold, 2006). We all need to take responsibility for promoting reading – in its broadest sense – to children and young people. Even if you hate novels and poetry but like reading the newspaper, you can emphasise the importance of non-fiction to your daily life when talking to pupils about reading. You can advocate for audiobooks, short stories, flash fiction, or whatever it is that does appeal to you.

If you truly hate all forms of fiction and non-fiction, then please observe the old adage that ‘if you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all.’ There is nothing more undermining to a whole school reading culture than the majority of staff shrugging to their students and saying ‘don’t worry about it, I hate reading and I’ve done alright.’ For those of us working in secondary schools, I have often reflected on the responsibility we have to other subjects beyond our own. As a secondary English teacher, I would enthusiastically throw myself into every sports day activity with my tutor group. My sporting successes as a young person include coming 14/14 for the long jump in a regional competition and being told that I ‘run like a T. Rex’ by a P.E teacher. My own negative experiences were irrelevant: sports day was a key event for bringing our school community together and for raising the profile of physical exercise. I know that physical exercise is good for children and young people. Why would I model anything other than enthusiasm to my students?

Creating a social motivation for reading

Research has suggested that the social dimensions of reading are important for young people, who “connect their reading with their friendships and their leisure time” (Guthrie et al., 2000, p. 209). I don’t agree with absolutely everything in Reading Reconsidered (Lemov, Driggs and Woolway, 2016, p. 51), but I definitely agree that a schoolwide canon (a list of books that are valued by the whole school community) can have a positive impact on a school. For me, the power of this is rooted in the opportunity to create a shared social context around reading these texts.

In the primary school where I researched reading for pleasure, one teacher used his class budget to purchase new books in sets of six. He would then organise students into carefully chosen groups and give them a choice of which book they wanted to read. The groups would negotiate and debate before they made their choice and then be expected to read a section of their chosen book every night after school. Each day would start with the teacher writing key discussion questions on the board and the students chatting about these in relation to their reading of the group’s text the night before. The teacher did not sanction the students who clearly hadn’t read. Instead, he watched as those who had engaged talked excitedly about what they’d read the night before. Those children who had not completed the set reading were quiet and unavoidably ‘left out’ of the conversations. Within a few days, every student in the class was carrying out their daily reading and sharing their views – positive or negative – about their text each morning. The social pressure had worked its wonders! Obviously, a technique like this would not work for every teacher in every classroom of every school. However, it does demonstrate the possible impacts of creating a social context where reading is highly valued.

When my own personal book collection got too large for the bookshelves that lined every room of the terraced house I lived in, divine providence stepped in and my school’s librarian asked me if the English department could make use of some spinning book display stands that were no longer required. Seeing an opportunity to free up some space in my house and promote reading for pleasure, I carried them upstairs and over the next few weeks transported hundreds of my own books to my classroom. Whilst I thought it would be handy to signpost suggestions to A-level students for their wider reading coursework, I could never have anticipated the impact this would have on my other students. Because they knew they were my books, rather than the school’s, they would ask if they could borrow them. My enthusiastic assent (‘only if you tell me what you think of it afterwards!’) had social value – I clearly trusted them to return each book to me (and had such an overwhelming book collection that I was unlikely to notice if they didn’t!) Students in my tutor group would then talk about the books that they were reading and swap them once they had finished. I had never intended for my book collection to inspire an informal reading group, but just the presence of these books in my classroom made them a talking point.

I’m not the only one who has seen the positive impact of sharing personal book collections with students. Teacher and researcher Kayleigh Betterton has brought her antiquarian book collection into her classroom, teaching her A-level students “how to 'read' books as physical objects and then allow them to interact with the collection themselves” (Fine Books & Collections, 2014). From ‘recommended book’ boxes to bookcrossing points (www.bookcrossing.com/bookmap), there are so many ways that school communities can celebrate books.

I always love to hear about ways of promoting reading in schools – if you do something you're excited about then please do let me know on Twitter (@wright_read).

This blog post is Part 2 of a series. You can read Part 1 here: https://www.brittanywright.co.uk/post/we-need-to-think-twice-about-reading-in-secondary-schools-part-1-improving-practice-with-theory

References

Clark, C. and Rumbold, K. (2006) Reading for pleasure: A research overview. National Literacy Trust.

Fine Books & Collections (2014) Bright Young Collectors: Kayleigh Betterton, Fine Books & Collections. Available at: https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/blog/bright-young-collectors-kayleigh-betterton (Accessed: 23 June 2022).

Great School Libraries (2019) National survey to scope school library provision in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales. BMG Research. Available at: https://www.greatschoollibraries.org.uk/_files/ugd/8d6dfb_8b81a7c94c2c4c4a970265496f42307a.pdf.

Guthrie, J.T. et al. (2000) ‘Building toward coherent instruction’, in Baker, L., Dreher, M.J., and Guthrie, John T. (eds) Engaging Young Readers: Promoting Achievement and Motivation. 1st edition. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 209–237.

Lemov, D., Driggs, C. and Woolway, E. (2016) Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction. 1st edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.