Read your way to a better life
The facts are simple: reading for pleasure is more important for children's cognitive development than their parents' level of education and is a more powerful factor in life achievement than socio-economic background.
As teachers, we know that reading for enjoyment is vital to a child’s development and future success in life. Children who enjoy reading are three times more likely to read above the level expected for their age than children who don’t enjoy reading. In addition, children who are good readers are three times more likely to have higher mental wellbeing than their peers with below expected reading skills.
There are obvious benefits for children’s literacy skills which impact all areas of the curriculum, not just English. However, there are significant benefits to leisure-time reading that go far beyond academic achievement. The reading framework, published in July 2023 by the DfE, advised that "Wide recreational reading expands pupils’ knowledge about the world and about language, as well as their understanding of subject-specific academic and technical vocabulary ... Further, pupils who read regularly report heightened levels of social and emotional wellbeing."
Indeed, in 2015 The Reading Agency collated the findings relating to research into the non-literacy, wider outcomes of reading for pleasure or empowerment. The report shows clear evidence that reading for pleasure can:
- Increase empathy and understanding of others
- Improve self-esteem and wellbeing throughout life
- Improve relationships with others
- Improve sleep patterns, focus and mood regulation
- Enable children to enhance their emotional vocabulary and imagination
- Improve social capital for children and young people
- Improve parent-child communication
- Enhance a sense of personal and social belonging
- Reduce the symptoms of depression and dementia among adults
- Provide relaxation and escapism
- Provide a greater sense of life satisfaction.
A key theme that came through the research was the centrality of enjoyment of reading as a prerequisite for the other outcomes of reading to be achieved.
Factors that create engaged readers
Certain factors increase the likelihood of creating engaged readers, such as ensuring students:
1. Have access to books — print and digital
2. Can choose their own books to read
3. Have regular opportunities to read independently
4. Are read aloud to regularly
5. Have time to chat about books and reading
6. Have reading role models.
Some children are reluctant readers, who prefer other leisure activities or simply believe reading to be boring. There is no single solution, but there are ways to encourage reading for pleasure, such as:
- Setting the expectation that every pupil will be a reader;
- Focusing on encouraging reading as a positive and enjoyable experience, rather than just a way to develop skills;
- Enabling pupils to choose what they want to read, rather than reading what we want them to read;
- Having a diverse range of appealing reading resources in different formats and genres, fiction and non-fiction;
- Ensure pupils regularly see new books through library visits and book fairs;
- Inviting authors and illustrators into school to inspire our pupils;
- Have expert advice on hand – Mrs Mills, our Librarian! – to point pupils in the right direction and recommend books based on their passions and interests.
Parents play an important part in developing good reading habits, so on World Book Day, what will be your next read?
Inservi Deo et laetare!
