Reading in Context

“The classroom environment creates a culture of literacy which the child – particularly the child with limited access to literacy experiences at home – will internalise and it is therefore vital that teachers put thought into how they organise resources to maximise impact on literacy learning.”

Creating a welcoming reading environment at Port Charlotte primary

Reading in context extract from Teachers’ Toolkit

In discussing books with children it is worth bearing in mind that every time we introduce a book by its cover we already suggest what the story journey might be – so make sure that you don’t become too preecriptive in the way you talk about books with children.

It might also be worth considering differentiating the stories you use for different groups of children according to developmental level.

This document from the City of Edinburgh has lots of ideas for encouraging reading:

Reading for enjoyment

This Northern Alliance document outlines the plan-do-review approach to using texts in the classroom:

Using Texts to Play and Talk Together in the Classroom