Blog

Let’s Learn to Love Books

13th February 2022

I once gave a class of year one children a box of books to read. It was my ‘Library in a Box’, containing a huge variety of books. It had fiction, non-fiction, old, new, pristine, tattered, picture books, novels, pop-up books, comics and so on. I told the children they could spend the next twenty minutes enjoying any of books they wanted to. For the first few minutes, several children just sat staring at the box. When I asked them what was wrong, they told me, “We can’t read books like this. We can only read books like that.” They then pointed to the shelf of pre-approved phonics scheme books, all completely uniform in appearance: the same size, the same cover design, the same layout, the same font, the same colours.

But I’m Not Allowed This Book

There’s a current edict from the DfE mandating that all schools must buy into some sort of a pre-approved phonics scheme. This is coupled with a guarantee that any Ofsted visit will always ‘deep dive’ reading. The intention of these initiatives is to ensure that schools are adequately teaching phonics and, by extension, effectively teaching children to read. Yes, this is importance, but buried in the guidance is a line or two about making sure children go home with books that are ‘accessible’ for their reading level. This is a rule that a lot of schools seem to have heeded closely and it terrifies me. By communicating to children that they must only stick to books that are deemed ‘accessible’ for them, we are also communicating that there are such things as books that are ‘not accessible, or off-limits to them.

Schools often look to a seminal (or is that notorious?) piece of research named the Rose Report to inform their teaching of reading. This report details two main areas of learning to read: decoding (knowing what the word says at a surface level) and comprehension (understanding what you’ve read in a broader sense). Much practice in schools revolves around these two areas of reading. Yes, they are both essential, but I would argue that there is a third, missing, element that’s just as important and is overlooked in the new guidance: enjoyment.

Enjoy Your Books

Once, a seven-year-old child in my class opted to take home a library book titled, A Complete History of Latvia. He wasn’t Latvian. He was from Derby, in fact. But he was interested in the book and adamant that he wanted it. It looked pretty deep reading, even for me. He loved it though, and for the rest of the year would constantly broadside me at playtimes with new facts about Latvia. Had he only been allowed to take home ‘accessible’ books – books which are often about things like a fluffy dog and Dad’s new coat – then he would never have had this experience or gained this knowledge.

Being too prescriptive about what children read, and following guidance too closely, might shut children off from understanding what reading really is: something to enjoy. In my time I’ve seen a variety of approaches to how schools send reading home with the children. Personally, I’ve always favoured the ‘Wild West’ method of allowing children to take home whatever takes their fancy (although I do balance this somewhat by also sending home a book I’ve selected for them as their teacher). At the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve also seen schools that control every last little word the children come across. In these schools, worksheets are sent home in the same font, and are written with words to match the child’s ‘level’ of reading. I’ve come across some incredibly sophisticated school libraries using what must be some sort of NASA technology to employ databases, algorithms and numerical codes to ensure children can’t possibly take home a book that’s beyond their ‘level’ (however much they might really want to).

The justification for this is that by controlling children’s access to literature, we are empowering children as readers, helping their confidence grow as they realise they can read for themselves. I do think it’s important to foster this self-belief, and to guide it, but we shouldn’t forget that many children are capable of overcoming, and actively welcome, challenges. It’s something for a child’s teacher to be mindful of; a need-by-need basis.

Ban the Book Band

In my opinion, this ‘levelling’ of reading has become something of a plague on schools. In the beginning, the book banding systems were designed to help as a way of giving teachers a standardised resource to guide them towards an objective assessment. But over time, book banding has led to competition amongst parents, schools and teachers. It also often causes children to feel deflated. They fully understand what it means when they aren’t on the same colour as their peers, and I have often intervened when some have lauded their ‘superior’ book band status over others (and I’m not just talking about the children…) Never underestimate how keenly children understand what’s going on. They know that green readers are ‘better’ readers than red readers. Imagine that! In an environment in which we want children to learn to read, we are actively and openly reinforcing the idea that some of them are better readers than others. This negative effect is what was behind my year ones’ fear of my Library In a Box. They had been given the impression that they can’t read ‘books like that’. Not that they aren’t allowed, but that they can’t.

The new guidance from the DfE it is meant as a system of regulation, to make sure no children are left behind. This is a good thing. But limiting too tightly what the children can access will have the opposite effect. Children won’t be given a chance to enjoy books. They won’t be challenged. They won’t stumble across their new favourite characters or become experts on Latvia. They might, instead, see reading as a chore or a competition, and many will come to absolutely detest it because of this. There’s an idea that children are put off by words being too difficult. Again, I disagree. Children will be put off by a culture that prioritises reading as a skill and not a love. Yes, reading does take skill, and there will always be children for who it is so hard that it becomes distressing. But that’s where we must let our teachers be free to support these children in the best way they see fit. Teachers are clever. And they care. If a child is struggling to read, you can be damned sure that their teacher is lying awake at night, desperately trying to think of a way to help.

Ultimately, becoming a reader takes more than the skills. It takes a love of and engagement with books. We shouldn’t forget that.