Reading for Pleasure

At Asquith, reading is at the heart of everything we do. It allows children to be transported to other worlds and immersed in the lives of fictional characters.

It is a commonly said that a child’s future academic success is directly linked to their reading proficiency.

Reading for Pleasure in School

At the heart of Reading for Pleasure is the idea of children independently choosing to read in their own time, choosing who they read with, and also selecting reading matter for themselves. This is important for a number of reasons including, building a life-long love of reading, increasing well-being, developing empathy and understanding, as well as leading to higher attainment. Evidence suggests that there is a positive relationship between reading frequency, reading enjoyment and attainment (Clark 2011; Clark and Douglas 2011)

During 2022-23 Asquith Primary School undertook the Open University Reading Schools programme with Professor Teresa Cremin. We explored a number of approaches to increase the interest that our children had in reading, expanded staff knowledge of contemporary literature and monitored the impact across all areas of school. We found that incorporating specific Reading for Pleasure strategies through school encouraged our children (and staff) to be curious about reading and actively choose to spend time reading.

Some of the strategies we employ include the following:

Children are read to at least once every day. These are high quality texts from our book spine, supplemented with additional texts that teachers have chosen for enjoyment.
Once a week our children enjoy listening to poems by a range of different poets.
In Key Stage 1, children visit our school library once a week and share books. In KS2 children can access the library at various times of the day. We have librarians who can help with book choices.
Children are encouraged to spend time in classroom book corners, choosing their own books to look at.
Book blankts happen minimally every half-term. This is where children have time to choose books, a place to read and someone to read with. Quite often this involves exploring new authors or ranges of books.
Pitch a book - where staff try and encourage children to choose to listen to their book choice - takes place every term.
Staff publicise what they are reading so that the children can ask them questions about their reading choices and gain ideas and recommendations from staff.

During 2023-24 Asquith Primary School is embedding the Reading for Pleasure philosophy throughout school. We will also be joining the Open University for their Reading for Pleasure conference in March, where we will be taking part in a workshop about Reading Schools.