Today is World Book Day, so schools up and down the country are putting on events focused on stories, characters, poetry, authors, illustrators and books. In my own school, Notre Dame Prep, there have been reading events between older and younger children, a whole assembly to share in ‘The Biggest Show on Earth’. However, these events, enjoyed though they were, paled into insignificance beside the small competition to seek out each teacher in the school in order to identify the book represented by the character on the badge she (or he) was wearing.
We are all aware that pupils who learn a love of reading are likely to become best at it. Those of us who really enjoy being lost in a book have a great sense of the enjoyment at suspending the world for a few moments to engage in a fictional world. Some of us love non-fiction, and love the sense of learning. We all want our children to share those experiences. Michael Rosen talks a great deal about learning to love books, and a guide containing his ideas can be ordered for free at http://surveys.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/s/3zqSWDjiFkZ.Bu0
Top tips for engaging with the pleasure of a book always include making enough time to become immersed. For children who find reading more difficult this can usefully be comics, picture books and children’s magazines rather than the off putting demand to sit and slog over something that is too hard and cannot be managed independently. I am not talking about reading to improve, or reading to impress, or reading to depress…I am talking about developing the notion that reading can be fun, that stories can have a life of their own, can amuse, entertain, educate, transform....
Children love to chat about the books they are reading, and I have been reminded so pleasingly of that by children recognising the picture of ‘Mog the Forgetful Cat’ on my lapel. At least twenty children told me, with high excitement that they know that cat and they love that book. Others asked me if the book was about a cat. No matter their age I told them to seek out the book and to enjoy it. I might spend much of my time reading dry academic or educational literature, but nothing pleases me more than a beautiful well-crafted picture book.
If we want children to read, to love stories, to understand the great richness of imagination that is stored up for us in print, then we need to remember that making it pleasurable is more important than hours of enforced practice. So let your children see you loving a book and being too busy doing so to stop and watch TV; groan when they pull you out of a book to do something else; read to your children as often as you can, even just read them snippets from any text you have read. Above all allow the time for books to unravel their pleasures for your children.
Happy reading!
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