Read to Succeed

Every March we join together as part of a global community, to celebrate World Book Day. We reminisce about books we read as children and encourage every student to take pride in the statement, ‘I am a reader!’ But what about the other 364 days of the year? How can we ensure that all of the energy and enthusiasm of the first Thursday in March translates into a generation of young people who are confident readers, critical thinkers and articulate speakers?

Bedford Girls’ School Head of English, Mrs Francesca Graves, reflects on how we inspire students to read.

This year the Learning Resources Centre put on a range of fantastic activities throughout the day and week surrounding World Book Day, highlighting one particular section of the collection: The Classics. For many adults, these are the texts we grew up with; from children’s classics like Little Women to the Gothic thrillers like The Picture of Dorian Gray, there are a lot of familiar faces to be found on the shelves. However, discussion amongst academics and readers alike in recent years has turned to question the nature of some of the traditional Literary Canon, and we too encourage students to think more philosophically about how and why certain books might be classed as a classic. Recently, I saw a display in a bookshop entitled Future Classics, where texts such as The Book Thief by Markus Zusak sat alongside Americanah by Chimanmanca Ngozi Adichie, whose writing we study as part of our GCSE and IB Diploma courses, and it painted a vibrant and exciting picture of the potential literature classroom of the future.

Today, we find fewer and fewer students reaching for the traditional classics in their free time, and as a result when we do come to read Shakespeare and other texts classed as Literary Heritage texts for GCSE and A-Level, the syntax has the potential to be quite off-putting! However, in conversations with families we discuss how parents can support their children in transitioning to these challenging texts: strategies such as still reading aloud to children even as they grow older, or listening together to an audio version of a book on a family journey are often suggestions that parents find appealing, but also manageable in our hectic modern world. With Year 7 and Year 8 students, in particular, we discuss the importance of using these years to enrich their reading with a wide range of children’s classics to ensure they familiarise themselves with the more formal vocabulary and grammatical structures of traditional texts - such as E. Nesbit’s novels, The Railway Children, and Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes.

Reading is a greatly valued skill at BGS and an integral part of the curriculum in English and other subjects. In English lessons we aim to introduce students to a wide variety of text types, allowing students to experience reading plays, poems, novels, short stories and also non-fiction styles like memoir and travel writing. Some of these non-fiction styles are particularly important as we know many students do not have any experience of them except what we read together. However, wellwritten non-fiction texts can play a huge role in allowing students to follow their own lines of enquiry, which sparks curiosity or passion. We also know that to be successful at GCSE and in the Sixth Form students need to have an extensive vocabulary and the ability to express their ideas clearly and accurately, and certainly there is plenty of research to support the link between these skills and regular reading.

In order to raise the profile of reading amongst the students, and remind them to find a time for it in their busy lives, we have created a scheme to help engage interest in reading in a manageable and fun format!

Aimed at students in Years 7-9, it is called Read to Succeed and comprises 15 tasks for students to choose from with the aim to extend reading by challenging them to step outside of their comfort zone. Each task has a specific genre or topic focus, summarised in a booklet for the students to refer to. The LRC has been instrumental in creating beautiful and engaging displays to help the students understand what sort of texts might suit a particular task. For example, we have put particular emphasis on ‘Task 1: They’re Classics for a Reason’ this term, and already we’ve been impressed with the quality and variety of texts that the students have chosen to read; one Year 9 student has even taken on Dostoyevsky’s War and Peace- a challenging read at any age!

The development of a community of readers also creates opportunities for students to share their recommendations with each other, meaning that reading becomes a social activity, rather than something done in isolation, which is really important for teenage brains which thrive on social validation. ‘Task 5: A Recommended Read’ aims to build on this idea, and we make opportunities in English lessons for students to reflect on what they have been reading and use these recommendations to create a resource bank for other students. This also ties in with the opportunity to take part in the Carnegie Shadowing Scheme which is run by our Librarian Ms Rogers every year, where students have access to the shortlist for the prestigious children’s fiction prize and meet to discuss their thoughts on the potential of each to win; which also ties into to ‘Task 2: Prize Winning Fiction.’

Read to Succeed is an optional activity, but part of what makes it so relevant and rewarding for the students is the way in which it can be used alongside the busy and varied enrichment activities at BGS. The past term we have celebrated LGBT History Month, World Hijab Day, British Science Week and Neurodiversity Celebration Week to name but a few and we aim to use reading as a format to both allow all students to feel recognised and represented, but to also serve as a vital part of understanding alternative perspectives. In the LRC, students can always find a text to read in connection with these themes, and this in turn can help them complete ‘Task 10: Walk a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes.’ Our approach to reading fiction and drama texts is to consider characters and situations empathetically, showing an awareness of different perspectives and exploring social issues raised by the texts with sensitivity to others’ experiences; this task helps students develop skills we consider to be key to the study of literature.”