Stop, Drop, and Read: Creating a Reading Culture at School

Inquiry Assignment #1: Creating a Reading Culture at School

 “Reading transcends class, race, age, and gender. It’s a free magic carpet ride to anywhere on Earth (or beyond), at any point in time. Every child, regardless of age or ability, deserves to be able to access the written word.” (Hawthorne, 2021.)

As I child, there was nothing better for me than to curl up with one of my favourite books just before bedtime.  Those few minutes (and sometimes hours) were the best escape I could have had; I just loved letting my imagination go wild and I used to wish with all my heart that I would dream about what would happen next.  I love dreaming about stories from books! I still remember this one dream I had as a child where I was the female version of Harry Potter…What a thrill that was to be able to finally get my letter to attend Hogwarts! 

This love of reading has followed me through my whole life.  I always look forward to sitting down with a good book and just relax!  My children are the same, they love reading anything they can get their hands on and always look forward to library day at school so they can get more books!

I was happy to see that our first Inquiry blog would be about instilling a reading culture in our schools.  I started thinking about some of the things we have been doing already as a school and started looking for more ideas to use in the future.  

But what does it mean to have a Reading Culture in schools?  And how do we know we are on the right track to achieving this?

 

 

In her article “How To Promote a Reading Culture in Schools,” Hawthorne tells us that 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.” (Hawthorne, 2021). She also adds that “building a strong reading culture puts reading at the forefront of school improvement. A creative and exciting reading culture not only breeds capable and committed readers, (but it also) boosts wellbeing, community connectedness, and student outcomes.” (Hawthorne, 2021.)

As educators, it is our job to provide opportunities for students to have access to the “written word.”  This can be in the form of books, read-alouds, reading apps, online stories, etc.  The more access students have to reading materials, the easier it will be for them to see themselves as members of a community that views reading as a significant and enjoyable activity.  

This made me think about some of the things we have been doing at school in the last few years.  I was pleased to see that we are already doing some of the ideas Hawthorne mentions in her article and to find other things we could do to further develop a reading culture at school.  

The article also reminded me of how everything started for us at school.  I remember when in the fall of 2019, our admin team discussed with us what our long-term goals would be for the next 5 years.  I was very excited when I found out that one of those goals would be to instill a love for reading in our school.  

I had so many ideas I wanted to work on but then, covid hit.  Oh, talk about raining on a parade! As all teachers know, we went on survival mode and tried our best to help our kiddos learn, while the world around us stood still.  I’m not going to lie…it was hard! We were thrown into the deep end with nothing but a deflated raft and we were expected to stay afloat.  

 

Our school community suffered, we all suffered.  We felt so disconnected with one another and our principal had had enough.  She decided that we needed to bring our community back together, even when we were apart.  She came up with the theme of “The Stories that Bring us Together,” and asked us to brainstorm ideas on how we could do this, not only inside our building but also outside.  Our main objective is to not only bring our community closer once again, but to continue to instill a love for reading.

Because of what was happening around us, we decided to use social media to set our plan in motion.  Our admin decided to use the parent PAC page to have live story time every Sunday evening.  Each of us had a turn to read one of our favourite stories live.  It was terrifying to say the least! I love reading, but the idea of reading into a camera while the word “live” was being displayed was a bit nerve wracking.  More so when you would see the number of viewers increasing! 

                 

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All those nerves went out the window though, once we started getting emails from parents thanking us for taking time to read to their kids.

As a classroom teacher, I started small.  I still wanted to read to my students, so I decided to open my own YouTube channel and upload read-alouds for them to be able to access from home.  It was a challenging but very worthwhile experience to learn how to create videos, upload them, and share them.  Below is one of the first videos I worked on early in the pandemic.

Once we were back in the building, we wanted to continue creating our reading culture.  We decided as staff to have a week-long event called “Stop, Drop and Read.”  The way it worked was that once through the day, we would have the song “Happy” play over the intercom.  Students and staff were to drop everything they were doing, pick up a book and read for 15 minutes.  It was amazing how quiet it was in the hallways because everyone was reading!  By the end of the week, we asked our classes what they thought about the event, and they loved it! Kids wanted to do it for longer too, so we decided to do it once every couple months to start.  The librarian at the time, made sure that every class without a classroom library had a tub of books at the ready in case someone was in the room when the song started playing.  Teachers knew that even if they were in the gym, they would have access to books.

This year, we are continuing to create a reading culture in our school.  We have done a few other things like: having the principal come to classes to do read-alouds, organizing “Stop, Drop and Read” once again, continuing to do live story time on Facebook, and encouraging a block of silent reading after lunch every day.  One thing we have noticed this year is how we have more struggling readers within our school community than we did prior to the pandemic.  This of course, has something to do with what has been happening in the world and how the quality of instruction changed while we were doing online learning.  Our school has decided to tackle this by having reading groups where our support teachers take students out once a day to work on reading strategies and phonemic awareness.  Due to covid, we have had to keep our groups small as we cannot combine classes.  We also had a big buddy reading program, where grade 6/7 kids would come down to the primary side and pull out some of our students to read to them and practice their sounds for about 15 minutes at the beginning of every day.  We are hoping to start this buddy program again once restrictions ease off a little.  

At the library, we are working on some future projects to encourage kids to read.  One of our main goals right now is to try to get books into the hands of all our kids! We have modified our return policy and allow kids to take a book out even if they have not returned their previous one.  We have also started to curate our collection to be able to have more diversity so all our students will be able to see themselves in the stories.  We strongly believe that students will be drawn to stories more if they can easily relate to the characters. We have also started a program we call “LVE’s picks,” which works just like “Heather’s picks” at Chapters.  I give a card to each teacher, and once a month they get to come down to the library to look for one of their favourite stories.  We then display them around the library and by the windows so students can see what their teachers like and can sign the books out.  We have also started a “Bookstagram” bulletin board where we ask students to tell us what they think about books they’re reading and if they recommend them.  Here is one of the templates we are currently using, we purchased it from the Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Last but not least, we have worked hard to make our School Learning Commons as welcoming as possible.  We have added comfy sitting, lamps, plants, a campfire corner where we sit for story time, and have started to genrefy our collection to make it more accessible to all.  

Where does that leave us now?

 

I am pleased to see that we are on the right path.  Are we done yet? Not even close, we have a way to go still…however, I am confident we will get there!  Some of the ideas I would like to explore more are: Continue to spark curiosity within the school, host library events, organize community read-alouds, and host webinars for parents.

1) Spark curiosity within the school: some ideas I would like to explore are creating visual stimulus around our school.  Ideally, I would like to create reading nooks throughout the school, where children and staff can take a break if needed and read some of their favourite stories.  We will continue to create colourful bulletin displays and start using the windows to show parents the happenings around school.  I would like to create QR codes for our school website, Facebook page or Instagram page.  Perhaps even add a code to access some reading apps we use at school.  I would like to enlist the help of staff so they can tape them to their windows so Parents can use their phones to scan the codes while waiting for dismissal and find out what their kids have been up to.  

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2) Host Library Events: One of the ideas I found while researching was hosting a book tasting.  This event gives students the chance to explore various genres in a fun and engaging way.  I was very intrigued and really like to plan one.  I would like to take it one step further and organize an online book tasting.  This will allow parents to also take part and to read alongside their children.  One of the ideas I really like was using an app called Book Creator, where students can enter their thoughts about the books they are tasting using Ipads or Chromebooks.  These pages can then be turned into books everyone can read!  At the end of the book tasting, students can work in groups to create trailers about their favourite book, we can then upload the videos in our school website and even send them to the authors! You can read more about this study and watch one of the sample trailers created by students here.                   

                                                    

3) Organize community read-alouds: ideally I would love to have guest speakers from around our community come read their favourite stories to our students.  Having a firefighter or a nurse read a book can be an exciting experience for the kids.  Covid of course has made me think of ways we could still do this.  I am thinking of organizing zoom events instead.  This will be neat as the whole school can listen to the story at once! 

                                                        

4) Webinars: I would like to help parents and caregivers feel more comfortable helping their kids at home.  This can be a very intimidating task if they do not know where to begin.  Organizing webinars where I introduce parents to some of our online reading programs and give them a chance to ask any questions they may have might be a good first step to take.  I do know that some parents might not be able to make the live webinars, due to work or other engagements so my plan is to record these webinars and upload them to our library website where they can easily access them later.  I would also like to share other resources like podcasts, useful apps, upcoming events at the local library, etc.  One of the podcasts I find very useful is called "Bright Horizons. Teach. Play. Love. Podcast".  You can access it through Spotify or Apple Podcast.  Here is a sample podcast where we learn how to choose proper reading material for our children.

                                                                

I certainly hope that some of these ideas help our school community continue to build a strong reading culture.  We must remember that “a creative and exciting reading culture not only breeds capable and committed readers, (but it also) boosts wellbeing, community connectedness, and student outcomes.” (Hawthorne, 2021.)

Do you have any other ideas or tips?  I would love to hear from you! 

Until next time…

The Duchess of Bookington

References:

1) Barrett, Lindsay. “25 Ways to Build Your School's Reading Culture.” We Are Teachers, 11 May 2021, https://www.weareteachers.com/build-reading-culture/

2) Book Creator.  “50 Ways to Use Book Creator in Your Classroom.”  https://read.bookcreator.com/aWAhdfUWXPQR1UPW7fJOHnfObsb2/_or2hLPmR3WlS34sPH.  Accessed on 8 Feb, 2022.

3) Campbell, Mira. “Hosting a Modern 'Book Tasting' with Book Creator for Chrome.” Book Creator App, 29 Sept. 2021, https://bookcreator.com/2018/06/hosting-a-modern-book-tasting-with-book-creator-for-chrome/

4) Hawthorne, Hannah. “Creating a Reading Culture: Importance & Ideas for Schools.” The Hub | High Speed Training, High Speed Training, 2 Feb. 2022, https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/how-to-promote-a-reading-culture-in-schools/

5)     Bright Horizons. “Reading with Children at Home & in the Classroom.”   www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/Articles/E-News/reading-with-kids#podcast. Accessed 10 Feb. 2022.