Encouraging Reading for Pleasure

The Literacy Trust’s 2024 report found that reading for enjoyment was at its lowest level among children since 2005. Here we speak to Mrs Helen D’Souza, Assistant Head Academic at Kingswood Prep, about how we are bucking the trend.

How do you encourage reading for pleasure at school?

The texts we choose to study in our English lessons are inspiring and unique. They are books the children are unlikely to have read before, meaning they are exposed to new authors and genres. We ‘hook’ the children into a new book through an exciting event, such as a circus skills day or a mysterious prop. For example, this morning our Year 4 children have walked into their classroom to find a trail of sparkling glitter across the floor leading to a huge frozen ice snowflake. They will be studying a beautiful book called Frindleswylde, all about a magical frozen kingdom and this hook is to spark their curiosity and to generate high levels of engagement with sophisticated language through the discussions. We are showing the children that books, even picture books in this case, can take your imagination in so many directions and they are exciting to be immersed in. They can see that you don’t have to be reading a long, bulky book to be exposing yourself to higher level language and complex plots. It’s how you ‘read between the lines’ and let your imagination take you on adventures that develops you into a more mature and sophisticated reader.

In Year 3 our children are given a Reading Challenge. They earn raffle tickets for reading consistently throughout the week and holidays and their tickets go into a prize draw at the end of each week. The more tickets in the draw, the more the chance of winning a fun prize!

We do Buddy Read every term. All the younger children in school have an older child as a buddy. We do buddy playtimes and buddy reads where the children get to meet up and either play or read. In a Buddy Read time, the children share their favourite books with their buddy. This could be the younger child reading to the older or the other way. It’s such a fabulous sight to see the sharing of books across the school. The children love meeting up with their buddies and often look forward to having the time to read to them and share their favourite stories.

Tell us about your school library – is it an inspiring space that encourages reading?

We use every space available to display books and give the children reading time in their daily timetable where they can go to a dedicated library area to read. The choice of books is wide and varied and we give the children guidance with which book to choose. Audio books are also available in our library areas so that children can be exposed to the rich language of texts, even if they are not yet able to read the words yet. This helps to support vocabulary development and comprehension. We also have a selection of children’s newspapers and magazines for the children to read so they don’t always feel they need to read a chapter book.

How does what the children read for pleasure wend its way into their actual schoolwork?

We recognise that children have a wide variety of choice when choosing books to read outside of school, but there do tend to be trends that happen in different year groups. The graphic novels such as Bunny versus Monkey have been very popular with Year 3 and 4 boys for example, due to their comic book layout and less formal written text. Leaning into this trend, some lessons may ask the children to create their own comic strips of a different story or a historical event such as Boudicca’s army invasions.

World Book Day is a time to celebrate the children’s favourite fictional characters as they come to school dressed in a fabulous variety of costumes.

Do you use reading for pleasure as an inspiration for children’s creative work and projects?

Yes, our whole approach is to link our learning across the curriculum as much as possible. For example, our Year 2 children spent time creating a beautiful display for their classroom with colourful fish swimming through a river. They were proud to see their decorated fish pictures on the wall of their classroom. To their shock and surprise, when they entered the classroom the next morning, the display had black shiny paper all over it and the beautiful colourful fish pictures had been replaced with skeleton pictures of fish instead. The river had been polluted with oil from a nearby factory. This triggered incredible discussions about what might have happened. The children were about to embark on reading a book called “We are Water Protectors” and this was their hook. From this, the children learnt about pertinent environmental issues in science, discussed the problems of pollution in class and also wrote to the King about the problems with water pollution in our country. Some children were even able to suggest solutions based on the knowledge they had gleaned from the book.

When reading the book, ‘Hidden Figures’, our Year 5 children had to write their own job applications for a job at NASA. They spent time researching the various roles that were available and what qualifications they would need. This inspired discussions in science lessons about the work that is done by NASA and other space organisations and led to a study and exploration of space in more detail.

Do your pupils get information about local library’s summer reader schemes, or do you have your own, or any other incentives to encourage reading?

We sponsor authors at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival and the children get the opportunity to take part in the workshops and listen to the visiting authors. This year, two of our English Monitors from Year 6 had the pleasure of introducing Rob Biddaulph onto the stage and were transfixed with his talk about the books he has written. We have authors and poets visit us too. We were so lucky to have a visit from the poet Harry Baker who amazed us with his entertaining and world class poetry. You could hear the children repeating it in the corridors for weeks after!

We’re fortunate to have ‘Mr B’s Reading Emporium’ on our doorstep in Bath, which the Guardian named as one of the ten best bookshops in the world. We encourage parents to take their children for an immersive experience, with book advice tailored to their passions.

How do you promote reading for pleasure to parents/carers – does a book go home every week?

Children up to Year 4 use Reading Diaries to record their home and school reading, allowing parents to communicate to teachers about their child’s reading at home. Incentives in Year 3 with the raffle tickets system means that children try to read more at home. We also do a summer reading challenge where we ask the children to send in pictures of them reading a book in unusual places while they are on holiday. We’ve had books being read at the top of mountains, floating on a lilo in the sea and even in a zoo.

What authors/books are always popular with your students?

Harry Potter and Roald Dahl still remain a popular choice for many. The Bunny Versus Monkey series has been incredibly popular with our boys, in particular in Year 3 and 4, as have the Beast Quest series. The Murder Most Unladylike series by Robin Stevens has been popular with our girls in the older year groups. We notice that children do tend to get stuck in a rut with the genre of books they choose, which is why our approach in English is so important. It shows them different authors and exposes the children to different genres. Our Year 6 children, for example, study a wordless picture book called The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Many children would not have thought this to be an option for children who are 10 and 11 years old. However, the messages that come through the book are powerful and encourage the children to develop empathy for those facing difficult, life-changing circumstances and explore themes such as migration, relationships, community and belonging. This opens the children to the idea that books can send messages and provoke discussion and imagination in different ways and leads them on to explore other books by the same author, such as Tales from Outer Suburbia or Lost Thing.

What is the impact of your reading programme?

Children see that, through reading engaging texts with rich vocabulary or inspiring illustrations, their quality of speaking and writing improves. In turn, their love of literature develops. By being exposed to a wide variety of texts, they are able to explore their options for independent reading as they are often inspired to read more of the same author or genre.

Our end of year reading data is very strong. By the end of Year 6, 100% of our children are scoring at national average or above.