“OK, so who reads regularly?” is the eternally optimistic question on every English teacher’s lips around the middle of September. The wait for that all-important positive response is only too often followed by the heart plummeting mumbled response of: “Um … does Snapchat count?”
We chime on to our students about how important it is to read for pleasure (“What, because you want to?”), how it can help a young person in their vocational area, improve their future career prospects and financial stability, give them the ability to meaningfully interact and express themselves as adults in an ever-changing society AND, who knows, it might even help them win a pub quiz one day!
Sadly, it will probably come as no surprise that 46 per cent of our young people (aged 16 to 24) don’t read in their spare time (Taylor, 2011) or even that 5.8 million adults read at or below Level 1 (OECD’s 2013 Survey of Adult Skills). But figures like these should really shake us to our core.
Background: Could GCSE resits be taught exclusively online?
From the magazine: How phonics can boost FE learners’ literacy
Opinion: We need a better plan for English and maths
Bringing a horse to water
As an English teacher in a large FE college, these statistics and the thought of regurgitating the same old question about reading this coming September have spurred me on to re-think the old “you can bring a horse to water” approach.
Just think: wouldn’t it be incredible if level 1 plumbing students, foundation catering students or level 2 health and social care students heard the familiar reassuring tones of their vocational teacher reading The Hate U Give extract that we’re focusing on this week in class or listening, at home, to their personal tutor reading the opening of The Bloody Chamber that has been set as part of their remote learning with some self-marked comprehension questions?
The answer is: yes, it would!
But would this stealth teaching pedagogy, one of my personal favourites, encourage those reluctant readers to access the material and to listen and read more?
At my college, we are testing that theory with a new reading project.
I used to be a great proponent of only reading out loud to my classes up until the end of December and then “making” them read the extract in silence every week from then on. This was to help“build their reading independence”, as I used to tell myself - and them.
Yes, I know they need to “do it” in an exam situation, but surely we have to encourage their interest and confidence and take away their fear and anxiety to enable them to “do it”. Having worked with a large number of dyslexic students over the years and as a mum of a dyslexic 10-year-old and a 15-year-old reluctant fiction reader, I now understand how awful an experience that must be.
Reading is fundamental
The core ethos of the reading project is to show students that people do actually read, that their level 1 plumbing teacher reads, that the college community is coming together to read, that you don’t have to actually “read” in order to read (listening to reading is just as powerful a spark) and that it can be a fun, or at least not a painful, thing to do.
I hope to have a bank of audio recordings for each extract, by the start of term which teachers can then pick and choose from to target specific cohorts. I’m already buzzing with ideas to expand the project further so that it continues to grow and develop and it will form the basis of my ETF OTLA action research project this year.
And that is just one of many new approaches we’re trying this year to reach our GCSE resit students. In late June, I sent an all-staff email to around 900 teachers, admin, SLT, and business support staff asking for their help by recording themselves reading from a selection of GCSE English type extracts that we could then use with our students in English lessons.
To those who reply I then forward breathtakingly un-in-depth instructions, such as “I’m looking for expressive readings that don’t sound like you’re in a toilet”, some extracts for them to choose from and even my own recorded extract of The Life of Pi (after about 20 attempts). Then, I wait patiently.
My emails have started pinging constantly as recordings roll in from my new team of “reading influencers”: LSAs, academic coaches, library staff, vocational teachers (I’m still trying to persuade more), English teachers, an assistant principal, and even a governor!
I am listening, loving and laughing. I have been moved by and given feedback to every single one of our amazing reading influencers who have volunteered their time (some have even volunteered their families, too). Your contribution may be the reason why a reluctant reader will want to find out what happens next or to listen to another reading, and I can’t wait to share them.
Angie Lenton is an English teacher and coordinator at Northampton College. She tweets @EnglishFE3
