October 2022 - School libraries and reading development

I am resurrecting the monthly chats for Professional Development. I will endeavour to post up an article/blog or TED talk once a month for us to read and I will also set some questions for us to discuss. You can respond at any time... This is an open discussion for anyone to join in.

We are reading this article... (sorry about the self-promotion!) https://www.headteacher-update.com/best-practice-article/school-libraries-and-reading-development-literacy-books-librarians-1/248043/

Reading for learning has been on my mind a lot. Primarily because I co-wrote the article above but also because on 17th October #LSLLTS Twitter Spaces ran a discussion on reading for recreation, reading for learning and reading for life. Listen to the recording here.

Questions for discussion are posted below.

A shelf of books — School libraries and reading development

17 comments

Comments (17)

Unknown member

Oct 18, 2022

5. There was lots of discussion in the podcast about the importance of conversation and helping students voice their own opinions. How can you help your students engage in this type of reading?

Unknown member

Oct 28, 2022

Replying to

I think that last point is important, Rachel. I had a conversation with some of our year 10s this week prompted by them saying one of them had a bad taste in books. I observed that it was more accurate to say they had 'different' taste in books. The fact that someone likes a different genre or style to you does not in itself mean they have bad taste. Nor does it mean that a book is bad just because you didn't like it. I find students sometimes struggle with that a little. It can be quite binary: liked it = good, didn't like it = bad. I think books (like music, movies, other forms of art) are less binary than that.