11 Ways to Celebrate Reading All Year Round
Looking for ways to celebrate reading in your classroom? Here are a few ways you can foster a love for reading all year round!
Are you looking for ways to celebrate reading in your classroom? We’ve scoured the internet for ways you can encourage a love of reading in your pupils and at no point do we mention dressing up, you’ll be pleased to know!
The list of activities below help you embed a love of reading in your classroom, taking your celebrations beyond World Book Day.
##Why is it important to celebrate reading?
Celebrating reading is important because it encourages children to enjoy and develop skills in reading. Enjoyment in reading has been proven to be imperative to positive life outcomes, impacting everything from mental health to future academic achievement.
“Children with reading difficulties are at a greater risk of developing mental health problems later in life, including depression, anxiety, behavioural problems, anger and aggression.” Boyes, M. E., Leitao, S., Claessen, M., Badcock, N. A., and Nayton, M. (2016) Why Are Reading Difficulties Associated with Mental Health Problems? in Dyslexia, 22: 263-266
“Per capita incomes are higher in countries where more adults reach the highest levels of literacy proficiency and fewer adults are at the lowest levels of literacy.” OECD (2013) OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results From the Survey of Adult Skills
Whilst days like World Book Day are helpful in raising awareness of the benefits of books and reading, encouragement from teachers in reading throughout the year is integral to instilling a love of reading for life.
How do you celebrate reading in the classroom?
Encourage a lifelong love of reading in your pupils.
1. Promote a culture of reading
Providing opportunity for book chat is one sure-fire way of creating a reading culture at your school. Provide members of staff with dry-wipe signs or badges to write on what they are currently reading and encourage all adults at the school to discuss reading with pupils. That includes cleaners, lunch supervisors, the school nurse, even visitors to the school. Not only will it encourage a reading culture, it may help to build stronger relationships between pupils and adults in the school.
2. Read to your class
It’s simple but effective. Finding time to read to your class every single day helps plug that gap for those pupils who are missing out on being read to by an adult at home. It’s comforting and enjoyable and helps to create a long-lasting love of books and stories. You remember that book that teacher read to you way back when, don’t you?
3. Engage with parents in reading
Engaging with parents in this way is not just a way of building relationships with them, it’s also a way of helping the literacy levels of the community. According to the National Literacy Trust, 1 in 6 adults have very poor literacy levels. Providing adults with the opportunity to read with their children in a safe space could help on multiple fronts.
4. Organise trips to your local library
Use it or lose it, as they say. Local libraries are hubs for local communities and they provide a huge source of reading material for children and adults alike. Introduce your pupils to their local library and provide them with a lifetime’s worth of free books and stories.
One of the best advantages of visiting a local library is the expertise that you get from a librarian. That librarian is another adult in your pupils’ lives who can be a model of a love of reading and can almost certainly provide personalised recommendations - have you ever met a librarian who didn’t love reading?
5. Host a book club
Book clubs not only promote reading but they have also been found to develop socio-emotional learning and self-motivation Petrich, 2015.
Setting up a book club is by no means easy, but with a thoughtful vision for the club and a plan for which books might star, a successful book club could revolutionise how books are discussed in your class. We found this great blog from the headteacher that might help your book club endeavours.
6. Author focus study
Why not dedicate a half term to a particular author? Choose an author you think would be new to your pupils and centre your reading activity around them.
You could:
Make your class read a book by the author
Create a display dedicated to the author that includes a biography
Contact the author and see if you can organise a Q&A with them either in person or online.
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7. Diversify your class library
How inclusive is your class or school library? Inclusivity in books helps children to see themselves and their peers in their reading. Diversity incorporates race, ethnicity, culture, heritage, neurodiversity, gender, nationality, religion, sexuality, social background and beliefs. Filling your library with diverse stories and authors is a fantastic way to celebrate reading and diversity.
The School Reading List has a list of KS2 books to get you started. Our own Short Reads Question Sets also aim to diversify pupils’ reading experiences.
8. Read children’s fiction
Being able to recommend books and stories to your pupils is a great way to celebrate and encourage reading – your pupils trust your taste! To be able to do this with some of the most reluctant of readers involves having a working knowledge of a wide breadth of children’s fiction. It also helps that children’s fiction is generally fairly easy to read and has some of the best stories out there.
9. Provide as much breadth of reading as possible
A recipe in a cookbook, the back of a cereal box or an online blog, exposing children to different forms of texts broadens their vocabulary and knowledge of genres. There is always something for them to read, no matter what the situation!
10. Try different formats
In the 21st Century, stories now come in so many different formats; audiobooks, podcasts, e-books and the good old fashioned paperback are all worthy formats to consume stories. Allow your children to explore different formats of reading by giving them access. Playing audiobooks through an audio player in your book corner, or having a go at any of our reading Question Sets on LbQ, are just two ways you can provide new and exciting ways to consume stories for your pupils.
11. Celebrate reading across the curriculum
Reading shouldn’t just be confined to literacy lessons. There are so many ways to incorporate celebrating reading in other subjects too. Include beautifully illustrated books in your R.E. lessons; look for stories with similar themes to be included in your science lessons, or take a moment to read inspiring anecdotes from inspiring figures from history in your assemblies.
As well as our Short and Guided Reads, LbQ has a range of Cross-Curricular Reads that tie in with other subjects in the curriculum. These crossover sets are designed to carry over a love of reading into other parts of the curriculum or to attract those readers that interests lie outside the subject of English.
Interested in our reading Question Sets? Book a chat with us today.
