There has been much discussion recently about the effects of reading at pace to students, most recently this in TES.  More and more schools are adding teacher-led reading of novels to their curriculum in an attempt to shift away from the deeply flawed practice of sustained silent reading.  The gains can be several years of progress in one term for some students and several months in a matter of weeks for most.

But then this article appeared on TES this week about the reported drop in concentration levels among primary aged children resulting in them complaining about school being “boring”.  I’m sure those of us that work in secondary schools recognise similar issues with our students too, so it isn’t just a primary phase issue.  When the article was published, the Tweets emerged about banning social media and mobile phones for children.  But they also called for things like a more interesting curriculum, a change in pedagogy to “meet them where they are”, and a whole range of Tweets about the mystical element of “engagement” in lessons.

Image and Video Based Social Media

Social media and even the internet itself used to be a predominantly text driven medium.  There was a rapid shift towards image and video based media and with it a decrease in the amount of concentration needed to engage with the platform.  Ask a young person whether they are on either Twitter or TikTok and they will tell you exactly what is wrong with some social media platforms and why they are on one but not another.  Part of the problem is the medium used in some social media platforms and how this translates into the classroom.

The Erosion of Reading in Lessons

Over the past 15-20 years have we shot ourselves in the foot over the solution?  We have eroded the role of reading in the curriculum to the point where some traditionally text based subjects can now teach whole units without students reading any more than a couple of short paragraphs.  We have replaced reading as the primary method of delivering new information with things like YouTube videos and bullet pointed PowerPoint slides with oral transmission of extended information.  By removing reading from lessons, we send the message that reading is less important than watching or listening.  There is no wonder students struggle to concentrate for any more than a couple of minutes when they aren’t taught how to do it and given regular opportunities to practise.  The solution is to reclaim reading as the primary method a student will encounter new information, wherever appropriate, across the curriculum.

What can we do about it?

The first thing to establish is a purposeful common structure for reading to students that is used consistently across a setting.  The successes of teacher-led reading are in part due to the removal of certain barriers to accessing texts that an adult can facilitate when reading to a student.  They bring their expert level reading skills to help the novice reader navigate a more difficult text than they would be able to access independently.  And because the novice is then reading, engaging with, and discussing advanced language, their own knowledge increases.  Memory, and knowledge are the residue of thought.

‘In listening to and following a text read aloud by a more capable reader, who provides scaffolding, a less fluent reader can experience autonomy and fluency and bypass frustrating ‘sticking points’ at phonemic, semantic or word level to focus on comprehension.’ – Wood et al 1976, Kuhn et al 2010

Analysis by Kirsch comparing the engaged reading time of 2.2 million students found that –

• 0-5 mins per day = well below national average
• 5-14 mins per day = sluggish gains, below national average
• 15+ mins = accelerated reading gains
• 20 mins per day = likely score better than 90% of their peers on standardised tests. (National Center for Education Statistics)

It follows then that the goal is to have students reading challenging texts for 20+ minutes per day.  Perfect for a tutor reading session surely.  This is a compelling argument for embedding a systematic programme of teacher led extended reading into the daily routine of a school.

But it can’t explain the whole story.  It isn’t as simple as buying a load of books and having form tutors read them to their tutor groups each morning.  What happens between those sessions?  Is reading really something that can be chunked into one session per day then neglected until the following day?

A day in the reading life of a student

They start the day with 20 minutes of rich, engaging, high quality reading where they are challenged with advanced vocabulary and creative phrasing… and then go to the next lesson where information is presented via a YouTube video which the teacher then explains.  And then on to the next where a PowerPoint is used to present bullet pointed information while the teacher explains and elaborates.  What message are they being given?  What habits are they creating?

If a person wants to start a more healthy lifestyle they can’t just join a gym and expect results.  The habits of the person’s lifestyle choices need to change.  If they visit the gym once per week they will see sluggish gains that may be dismissed as not worth the effort over time.  Visit several times per week and the gains will be more rapid and the behaviour of exercise become embedded.  Couple this change in behaviour with other changes and the improvements will be further magnified.  Eat more healthily, walk short journeys instead of driving, and rest appropriately and the lifestyle shifts all combine to result in rapid and sustainable improvements in health.

The same can be said of reading.  Adding in a tutor session each week where students are read to from a novel will gain improvements but they will be sluggish and hard to sustain.  Shift the culture of reading across the entire setting and the gains will be rapid and sustainable.

How can we shift the culture of reading?

• Extended Reading

A session of adult modelled extended reading is an excellent way to start (or even finish) the day with purpose and setting the tone for the rest of the day.  At just 15 minutes per day your students will see accelerated gains in their reading ability over previous years.  It must be adult led, purposeful, structured, and deliberate.  If sustained silent reading is used then the gains will only be felt by students that already choose reading for pleasure as a form of entertainment in their free time.  If your day starts with a form tutor session, adding in some extended reading to that programme is an easy improvement to make.  As a start point, consider one morning of fiction and one morning of non-fiction to get models of best practice embedded before rolling out anything larger scale.

Once the expectations around extended reading are embedded, start looking to embed domain specific texts into subjects across the curriculum.  Scientific journals, biographies, geographical articles, and artist profiles are all ways that students can enrich their knowledge within a subject area at the same time as developing their ability to read fluently and comprehend texts.

• Diet

Students need to encounter reading in a broad range of formats and on a regular basis.  News articles, academic journals, information texts, graphic novels, and websites should all play a part in the broad and balanced diet of reading that a student encounters regularly.  Academic writing in different subjects follows different conventions and structures to works of fiction.  Extended reading of fiction at pace and modelled by an expert can only go so far to improve the literacy of novice readers.  They need more variety.  If we neglect non-fiction we miss a vital opportunity to add layers of background knowledge not necessarily covered by even a knowledge rich curriculum.

‘Reading tests are just knowledge tests in disguise’. – Daniel Willingham

‘To grasp the words on a page we have to know a lot of information that isn’t set out on a page’. – E.D. Hirsch

• Primary Method of Communicating New Information

Reading needs to become the primary method of communicating new information across a school.  If it can be a text, it should be.  Every time we put on a YouTube video where an American accent mispronounces key Tier 3 vocabulary as a student’s first encounter with that academic language we kill off reading a little more.  We send the message that other mediums are more beneficial than reading and that reading is just something done at the start of the day and with stories.  If every teacher were to present information as a text to be read instead of delivering new information orally with a PowerPoint slide as background there would be a huge cultural shift in the status enjoyed by reading across the entire profession.

Now the massive caveat on this point is that all forms of media have a role to play and I’m not saying there is no place for a video clip in a lesson.  And absolutely the best way to explain certain concepts in a number of subjects is via annotated diagrams or worked models.  But if new information could be text, it should be.

• Modelling & Commonality

Novices need modelled examples, scaffolding, and guidance for them to improve.  With reading this is often forgotten at secondary school level.  We hear things like “I’m not going to read this slide to you” in CPD sessions and it creeps into lessons.  Well, if you aren’t going to read it, why is it there?  Agree on a common structure for reading text in class and stick to it.  Every teacher, using the same language, the same structure, the same enrichment strategies, every lesson sends a really powerful message to students that reading is important everywhere and not just in English.  When every adult models reading, every student learns that reading isn’t something to be avoided.

The bottom line is that we can’t strip all opportunities to read from lessons and then complain that students don’t read.  We need to reclaim reading as the most prominent method for students to encounter new information.  This can of course be coupled with careful explanation and deliberate modelling, but ultimately, if it can be in a text to be read, it should be.