Inquiry Blog Post 1: Fostering a Reading Culture

A reading culture is an environment where reading is championed, valued, respected, and encouraged. Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum, and it’s of the upmost importance to a child’s personal, social, and academic success, as well as their general wellbeing. 

-- H. Hawthorne 

Getting personal

I would like to start with a personal reflection related to fostering a reading culture prior to looking at a school environment as I believe there are lessons to consider in my personal experiences.

Thanks in large part to my mother I am a reader. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom reading to me. In fact, in elementary school I remember taking out books - like a big Alfred Hitchcock book - so I could take them home and snuggle with my mom while she read me the stories! So my home is where I learned to love reading.

As a parent I wanted to give my children the same love of reading. Both my wife and I are readers, and our house is full of books. We spent hours reading to our children - first my son and then my daughter. We took them to the library so they could pick books for us to read to them as pre-readers (or bought books if we had the funds). We immersed our children in stories, and modelled reading and the love of reading. We really did create "an environment where reading is championed, valued, respected, and encouraged." (Hawthorne)

Our son is a "chip off the old block". And while his reading has moved on from reading fiction to non-fiction, he enjoys reading and appreciates getting a book (that he has selected) as a gift. As a family we joke that our daughter is a bit of a "black sheep" in the reading department (smile). She doesn't have time for reading for pleasure. While she is a strong reader and has a good foundation for future success, books are not her "jam". If she is going to "read", rather than pick up a physical book, she would prefer to listen to an audio book.

While I don't think our efforts to foster a reading culture "failed", this personal experience makes me wonder: what is the true measure of success when fostering a culture of reading?

Fostering a reading culture

One thing that I remember fondly from school was our regular reading time, known as Undisturbed Sustained Silent Reading (USSR). Miller and Bass point out that students need "...skills in building stamina in reading chapter books ...". (p. 81) The current equivalent of USSR is Drop Everything and Read (DEAR). I believe this is an integral part of fostering a reading culture. While the school I taught at incorporated DEAR during the "I Love to Read" month (February), I believe it should be happen throughout the year. By making reading a staple activity through integration into the schedule the school demonstrates it's belief in reading as an important skill. I would advocate with administration and peers to make DEAR a regular activity, occurring at least once a week.

I had the good fortune to work with a TL who put a lot of effort into fostering a reading culture in the school. Many of the things she did to create a reading culture in the school are things I am reading about. They are also things I would try too. Some of the ways the TL fostered a reading environment (and which I would try to work into my program) include:

• Library Pages - the Library Pages were grade 5 students who wanted to play a leadership role in the library. They would assist in fostering an interest in the library by:

• Giving book talks / reviews during assemblies

• Promoting library events (Scholastic Bookfair) and contests

• Assisting in the library during the Scholastic bookfair

• Bookfair - once a year the library would host a Scholastic bookfair (a common event in Manitoba for the Parent/Teacher meetings).

• Scholastic sent materials to the school and the TL, with the help of parent volunteers, would set-up displays in the library.

• For a few days before the parent meetings students would come down to the library to peruse the books and create wish lists for their parents.

• The Library Pages would run contests to help generate interest and posters would be set up around the school.

• When parents came they were encouraged to visit the library (often by excited children) where they could buy books for the children

• Scholastic would return a portion of the sales to the school to purchase items from Scholastic. The TL usually offered these funds to the Homeroom teachers to buy supplies for their rooms.

• Staff Involvement - A theme running through the video below is the need to include school staff in establishing and fostering a reading culture. From having them read along with students during USSR (they still referred to that) or the head of school giving a book review at school wide assemblies. Something I saw in my school were posters with teachers holding up books that hid part of their face while showing the book cover. While this was an older set of posters and it was never done again during my time at the school, I think this is a great idea.

I think this would be something that could be done following different holidays with a caption like: "This winter/spring/summer break I read ..." and then below the teacher "Ask me about it!" Over time I could try involving students (perhaps posting them on bulletin boards inside and outside the library) and even parents. For younger students it could be a picture of them and their parent(s) reading together!

• Buddy reading - an activity that teachers in different grades at the school arranged among themselves was buddy reading. Students in older grades would be partnered with students in younger grades. The teachers then set-up a schedule when the students would read to their buddies. Hawthorne's suggestion in this are is that you "Create a peer-to-peer reading scheme, where an older, more competent student supports a child whose reading age is below their chronological age."

A different way I think I would like to pursue in a school where I am a TL is to create a regular (weekly?) podcast hosted by students to talk about books they have read or are reading. They could discuss the merits of a book, their impressions of it and make recommendations regarding who it might be of interest to. This could even be extended to include parents, and thereby, hopefully, making them a part of fostering a culture of reading with their children.

An "unusual" idea presented in the video below is to encourage students to take books out of the school library for the holidays - including the summer! In my experience the school library makes a big push to get materials back before holidays - especially the summer - in order to perform an inventory I am guessing. The school highlighted in the YouTube video has gone the other way. They want to be sure students are reading over the holidays, so they encourage them to take out a number of books.

Should I have the opportunity to return to a school as a TL the above are just some of the ways I would try to foster a culture of reading. And while fostering a reading culture is often presented as creating individual who read for the love of it (which is me), the following quote from Hawthorne really resonates with me given the divergent attitudes toward reading expressed by my own children:

Children will need high levels of literacy in so many aspects of their lives. Everywhere children look, there’s a sea of information for them to digest – in school, at home, on public transport, on the roads, and on digital technology interfaces. Not only is reading required for success in future employment, an ability to read will help children in future relationships, when running a household, and when navigating all aspects of their personal lives.

One reads for pleasure and one reads because she has too, but both my children have the literacy skills to navigate life. In the end that is a strong measure of success in our family effort - aided by their schools (especially elementary) - to foster a culture of reading.

References

Hawthorne, H. (2021, August 16). How to promote a reading culture in schools. High Speed Training. https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/how-to-promote-a-reading-culture-in-schools/

NationalLibraryNZ. (2014). Creating a school-wide reading culture [Video]. In YouTube.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiOZQFLTwmQ&t=471s

Miller, S., & Bass, W. (2019).  Leading from the Library: Help your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age. International Society for Technology in Education.

Images

Audio book icon: Sushant savla, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons