HarperCollins Volunteer Forum notes
– Helping children to love reading
On October 15th HarperCollins and Farshore Consumer Insights Director Alison David shared HarperCollins' research into the decline of children reading for pleasure.
HarperCollins have carried out a number of different research projects with a range of groups including primary schools, parents and secondary school book clubs to look into how to counteract this decline.
Alison’s talk explains their findings and offers some practical solutions and strategies to help children love reading.
We recorded the forum on Teams, with over 100 of our Schoolreaders volunteers joining live to listen to the session.
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Click here to watch the recorded forum on our YouTube channel.
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We also have a short blog post about the forum: click here to read the blog
Some of the strategies that are in the presentation relate to regularly reading aloud to children at home; we know that this is not always practical for many families, and we need to be mindful of this when speaking to the children about their reading outside of the sessions with volunteers.
As always, please check any materials or ideas with the class teacher/Schoolreaders contact before applying them to your volunteering role.
Below are some suggestions for how to adopt some of these practices in school:
Wide choice and free choice: if you are able to within your school – support the children to choose books that appeal to them from the selection, this may be age / ability appropriate books such as non-fiction, graphic novels, manga, or comic books in the library or decide on which of the banded reading books available in class they would like to choose. Children enjoy having autonomy and agency over what they read.
Read to or with them: For those children that are struggling, being read to makes reading fun and removes the pressure.
Within the volunteering role in school this could look like:
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Take turns reading: you read a page, then they read a page.
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Echo reading - here you read a passage/sentence first and then they read the same part back to you – helped by your pace and expression.
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Reading aloud together – this can help with confidence; you become quieter as they get going and eventually stop.
Make it fun: we all know that if children enjoy doing something, they are more likely to carry on doing it. Encourage your readers to do voices for the characters when they are reading, ask their opinion of the book, think about the characters feelings and motivations.
Be a role model: if you able to talk about your love of reading in a natural way, this can be inspirational to the children. Perhaps explaining what books you have enjoyed, what they meant to you or how books have impacted your life.
If you require any advice regarding a specific child, please consult the class teacher or main school contact.
Schoolreaders remain to here to support you throughout your volunteering journey and can be contacted by email at admin@schoolreaders.org or by calling 01234 924111.
Additional resources and reading:
National Literacy Trust’ research into reading for pleasure is here
HarperCollins Research and project information about the work they have done into reading for pleasure can be found here: https://collins.co.uk/pages/research-and-guidance
One of HarperCollins imprints is Barrington Stoke which specializes in books for children with dyslexia and also reluctant readers: https://collins.co.uk/pages/barrington-stoke