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Guest Author: Anna Szpakowska

 Anna Szpakowska is a Lead Practitioner at a secondary school in North London, where she leads on reading. @annaszpakowska (LinkedIn)

Recently, I spent a Friday night writing a blog about my reading for pleasure curriculum. On the Saturday morning, I opened Substack to read with despair the title of a blog by David Didau ‘The myth of teaching children to read for pleasure’. I was concerned. 

However, when I read Didau’s blog, I became less concerned. 

It became apparent that what he suggests is not that we shouldn’t engage students in reading for pleasure. Rather, that it’s the way that initiatives are executed in schools that means reading for pleasure doesn’t have the impact teachers hope it might on academic achievement. 

When I started as Lead Practitioner for Reading just over two years ago, I inherited a programme called ‘Reading for Pleasure’. These are timetabled lessons once a week for students in years 7 and 8 (we have since expanded into year 9 too). Initially, I was asked to ensure the text choices were linked directly to the English curriculum. The year 7 book – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe had been chosen prior to my appointment. It had been selected for its classical allusions that would complement our year 7 units on The Iliad and The Odyssey. In year 8, I chose Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, thinking that the fear with which the telepaths are treated might chime nicely with the study of Frankenstein in year 8. 

However, after a term of reading these texts with students, two things became apparent. Firstly, many children had already read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in Key Stage Two and whilst I loved Wyndham’s dystopia, year 8 certainly didn’t. 

I went back to the drawing board. I wanted to find texts that would genuinely hook students and have them enjoying reading. This is where I introduced a structured choice. I visited bookshops and trawled the internet to find books that were age appropriate, provided challenge but that would appeal to students too. As Didau outlines, many students, especially those who are struggling readers, may revisit familiar safe material; this does not provide the challenge required to develop their reading. Therefore, it wasn’t good enough to simply take suggestions from students and allow them to vote. Instead, each class was presented with a choice of three, which had been selected by me. From here, they cast their votes. In year 7, they opted for Landy’s Skullduggery Pleasant and year 8 chose Tia Fisher’s verse novel, Crossing the Line. 

Both novels provide exposure to genres students don’t experience elsewhere in the curriculum. They’re both age appropriate, both in terms of reading age and interest level and they’ve proved really popular with our students. In our latest survey, over half of the students reported enjoying reading more as a result of reading these novels in class. Our library data supports this too, with many students subsequently taking out more of the Skullduggery series and other books from The Maze Runner series which we have since introduced in our year 9 reading for pleasure lessons. I’ve even seen some students who’ve managed to convince their parents to buy them the entire Skullduggery series and bring them into school. 

As Didau suggests, reading for pleasure shouldn’t compete with technology; we’re not vying with TikTok or YouTube. Teaching students to focus on reading as an activity for a prolonged period is the aim of our curriculum lessons. The lessons start in the same fashion as all lessons do in our school; a Do Now activity to recap prior learning. From here, new vocabulary is introduced, and students are given examples of its use. We explore a new word through its morphology or etymology where appropriate. We also use a range of checking for understanding activities to ensure that students can recognise and use the word in practice. 

From here, we read together for the vast majority of the lesson. In these lessons, we aim to engage students through listening to the text and reading along; it’s similar to the practice described here by Richard Tutt as ‘immersive reading’. We either use Audible – where the production is engaging- or the teacher reads aloud, modelling fluency, intonation and expression. Teachers are provided with pre-written discussion questions, but they’re encouraged to articulate their thought processes aloud and ask students questions as they read. All students are provided with a text to follow along as they read; crucial to ensure that they make connections between what they hear and the words on the page. The main aim of this approach is to improve student comprehension. However, I endorse strongly Megan Dixon’s view that, we are responsible for educating students in the ‘broadest sense’ and that ‘reading together can create a powerful sense of being in the moment – surely an active ingredient in the education of every child!’

So, whilst I don’t agree with David Didau that it is a ‘myth’ to suggest that reading for pleasure should be a curriculum aim, I do think that trying to ‘get down with the kids’ is a mistake. Of course, they are children and they should enjoy texts aimed at children. We have a responsibility to facilitate that. That’s why educators can guide, whilst also taking on board children’s views. We can enjoy books that interest them without reading The Diary of a Wimpy Kid for the 400^th time. Select age-appropriate books that will pique their interest, dedicate curriculum time to it, enjoy them together, and it will surely pay dividends.