Are you sitting comfortably?

In this article the Coventry Reading for Pleasure Teachers’ Group recommend approaches to promote reading aloud in your school.

Dedicated Time

First on the list from our Reading Teachers was setting aside dedicated reading time and making sure that everyone commits to it. When introducing daily reading aloud in her school, Suzie, a headteacher, said she would drop into classes during timetabled reading aloud to hear what was being read and to gauge commitment to the initiative. She no longer does this. The teachers and children in her school love their dedicated read aloud time. In fact, so much so that they’ve contributed lots more reading aloud ideas further down in this article

Tom’s another senior leader in our RfP group, and as you’d expect, he’s taken a really strategic approach to promoting reading aloud in his school. In recognition that timetables are jam-packed and that some staff need a helping hand to get started, Tom’s asked his colleagues to read aloud to their classes at least 3 times a week. He’s given colleagues a further helping hand by reading to the whole school during his weekly assembly and by acknowledging this whole school read as one of the 3 read aloud sessions for staff struggling to fit it in them themselves. 

Making sure everyone can see the pictures (and the words)

Linda has got us all thinking about technology and how it can help us improve children’s reading lives. Linda connects the Kindle app on her computer with the Interactive Whiteboard in her classroom so that everyone has a good view of the pictures (and the words) whilst she reads aloud. In related news, it was Linda who told us all about the e-books we can borrow from Coventry Public libraries a service available via Borrow Box, which you may well want to check out with your local library if you’ve not already done so.

Offer choice

One of the guiding principles of Reading for Pleasure is that it’s done by choice. In the time that we’ve been meeting, our group has talked about how to offer choice in the texts that children hear read aloud. One way that this can be done is to invite your class to choose the books they hear by collating a shortlist and allowing them to vote on it. This can be extended to the whole school by asking members of staff to prepare opening lines, or short promotional blurbs about the book they’re going to read aloud. Children across the school then vote on which book they’d like to hear and visit that teacher to hear the book at an agreed time.  Members of our reading group suggest making the blurbs anonymous to ensure that children make their choices based on the books rather than the members of staff reading them!

Making good use of human resources

Several members of our group, including Emma, Cara and Claire, talked at length about that member of staff in their schools who, if asked, could read the telephone directory aloud and make it sound like the most lyrical work of literature ever written. I’ll bet you have one of those team members in your school too. We don’t all have this skill (although we can try and we’ll come back to this later), but how can we make the most of the colleague in possession of this gift? One idea is to create a rota so that colleagues visit different classes to share a favourite book. This way you can share the lyrical readers across the school and if you ask less confident teachers to stay and listen whilst the visiting teacher reads, there’s a good opportunity for them to learn some those important read aloud techniques.

Learn from the masters

This is related to the point above and really is about learning from what it is that the lyrical readers do. First off, do the voices! Character voices bring the text alive and children love hearing you discover your inner thespian. Try your best to respond to the content of the text, e.g. increasing the pace of your reading to reflect a racing narrative or dropping your volume to build suspense, build in pauses to ensure listeners hang on to hear what happens next and make eye-contact with children as you’re reading.

Encourage children to read aloud

When promoting reading aloud in our schools we’re often focused on ensuring that children hear adults reading aloud to them for pleasure. But what about encouraging children to read aloud to one another? Our RfP group think this is a really important part of developing reading aloud in their schools so what are they doing? Suzie has previously worked in a school that had a visiting reading dog and Wendy is lucky enough to work in one where a reading dog comes in every week. As you know, dogs are non-judgemental animals that are unlikely to interject if you mispronounce a word or need to go back and re-read a sentence to check that it makes sense. They’re great listeners that allow developing readers to find their reading aloud feet. One of our other Reading Teachers, Jenny, is working on reading aloud in her school by providing all of the children in Y1 and Y2 with a small teddy bear. Just like dogs, teddies are very good at listening and they also like a good cuddle whilst being read to which makes the read aloud sessions super nurturing too.

Choose a good book

Not all books read aloud well. Our RfP group have made a list of good books to read aloud which we’ll share with you in a separate post. Whilst we’re putting that together, some of their tips are:

• Avoid books with lots of speech bubbles, asides and shout-out text. It works well on an individual level or when reading in a huddle, but it just doesn’t transfer to reading aloud in a group.

• Choose books with rhythm, rhyme or repeating phrases. This way children can join in with the predictable parts of the text. This leads into the next point…

• Don’t neglect poetry. It’s often short so fits into a limited amount of time and many children’s poems are written with reading aloud in mind.

• If you’re reading longer books, choose texts with good cliff-hangers. If children are groaning because you’ve finished a chapter, then you’ve probably made a good choice of text that the children want to continue hearing.

With World Read Aloud Day on February 3rd, we hope our Read Aloud Tips will help you make the most of the day. Don’t forget to use #WorldReadAloudDay in your social media posts and if you’re looking for further inspiration, pay a visit to Litworld.org, Scholastic.com and the brilliant OU Research Rich Pedagogies website which has a special section on reading aloud here.

This article could not have been written without the input of the brilliant Coventry Teachers’ Reading Group. This is a research initiative led by the Open University and the United Kingdom Literacy Association. Find out more about this initiative here.