Quick quiz. You’re reading a book out loud to a group of young listeners, and two of them turn to each other and start whispering. Out of the following three options, should you…

1. say something like, ​“Er, you should be listening. Attention this way please.”

2. look at them enthusiastically and say ​“Exactly! And then…” before continuing to read.

3. wait for them to finish.

Since this piece is written by a storyteller, you’re probably expecting the answer to be ​‘B’ – and you’d be right.

But I’d be willing to bet that, in practice, you often choose ​‘A’. That’s the natural choice. If we’re trying to hold an audience’s attention, we expect them to focus on us.

However, with almost two decades of experience as an oral storyteller, I can assure you: if two listeners start whispering with each other, 99 times out of 10, they’re commenting on the story.

And no, that’s not a typo.

So if you say, ​“you should be listening”, what you’re actually saying is, ​“Please stop engaging with this story. I’d rather you focus on me.”

Is that really your aim?

That said, ​‘C’ isn’t great either. Waiting risks losing the engagement of everyone else…

The Keyring skill for reading aloud

Fortunately, because you can be sure that the story you’re reading is the inspiration for any activity among your audience – be it chatting, miming, making a sound effect, etc – you can also be confident with the idea behind ​‘B’: acknowledge and share their excitement, then read on.

The trick is in recognising that engagement looks different for every listener. Yes, some will smile and watch you intently – but others may gaze out the window as they picture the action you’re describing. Yet others may doodle an illustration as you speak.

And so the real secret to great group reading is…

Discover the Secret on BookTrust

WAIT! Don’t worry – this isn’t a sneaky way to get you paying to continue this article. BookTrust is a charity founded for the sole purpose of inspiring reading for pleasure, and the rest of this article is free!

I just felt, since I wrote this article to support the charity, I should probably send you to their website to read it in full. $;-)

Plus, that’s not all you’ll find from me on BookTrust’s website. We also recorded one of my storytelling sessions at John Ball Primary School as part of a free video course on the features of engaging storytelling. It goes into a little more depth than the article, but of course requires a little more of your time.

So if you only have a few minutes spare,

Finish the Article

If you have at least 20min,

Check Out the Short Course

And whichever you choose, I’d love to hear how you and your learners get on with these resources! Please…

Leave a comment

This is a chance to support seriously ill children whilst simultaneously boosting the creativity of the young people you care about.

The prizes are…

1. a Full Day of Storytelling for a School of Your Choice (including after-school teacher CPD)

2. a Full Collection of the Fables & Fairy Tales Series Signed by Illustrator Korky Paul (and also me…)

See below for details and links – and please share this with anyone you think might be interested in any of the above prizes. $:-)

Just a quick note, though: I don’t stand to gain anything from your bids. As it says on the auction website, 100% of your bid goes to the charity, and will therefore fund specialist nurses to support seriously ill children and their families – support that is desperately needed by families across the country.

That said, maybe I would gain something if you win the bid: a chance to say hi in person to one of my website readers…! $:-D

Here’re the fuller details…

A Full Day of Storytelling for a School of Your Choice

Send me to a school of your choice so every one of their learners can enjoy a full day of interactive storytelling, followed by an hour of after-school staff training in the use of storytelling as a teaching tool.

Bid On a School Storytelling Day

Signed Collection of Chip Colquhoun & Korky Paul’s Fables & Fairy Tales Series

All 30 stories in the series so far are especially designed for shared reading, and have been proven to entice children into reading for pleasure. Suitable for all ages from 5+, they have brought together families with siblings aged 5 and 11 enjoying them at the same time as their parents. For this unique gift, all 15 books are signed by both Korky and me. $:-)

Bid On Signed Children's Books

I won’t spoil the result of their investigation if you wish to hear it yourself – you can find it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0hx1drc

…though you’re probably thinking, I wouldn’t be sharing it with you if the ending wasn’t a happy one. $;-)

Even so, I’ve been thinking for some weeks since: how do we encourage reading among those learners who really are held back by their home situation? Reading for pleasure may be a deciding factor in the future success of those who can – but what if they genuinely don’t have access to books outside of school?

And remember: by “access to books”, we mean books they choose themselves. Reading for pleasure requires an interest in what you’re reading. So if the only books a learner has at home are those thrust upon them – including those from school reading schemes – their opportunities to read for pleasure will still be limited.

One potential solution is to help the learners’ grown-ups witness the enjoyment their children gain from reading. We explored one way to provide such an opportunity in the post at this link here. But even that solution has its limits if the grown-ups can’t afford books, or don’t have time to take their children to the local library.

But then I realised: I’d actually been in this position as a child myself. I loved reading, but my father couldn’t afford new books. That’s why I missed out on so much of the children’s and young adult fiction of my school years.

Perhaps my coping strategies from then could help educators today?

Here are three ideas for how to do so. They can be used with groups of any size, even one-to-one tuition, but I’ve written them here as if you’re working with a class size of around 30.

Idea 1: Using the Class Read

Sometimes I would go to the school library, find the book we had just started for our class read, and beg the librarian to let me take it home. This put me a few chapters ahead of everyone else in the class – but it meant that, if our teacher asked me to read any passage, I was more prepared.

How to adapt this for your learners: Read your class read like a storyteller as described in the post at this link here or in the book All the Better to Read You With – but be sure to pause at a cliffhanger. When you ask if they’d like to know what happens next and receive their resounding “Yes!”, offer the book to a learner you know or suspect to have little or no books at home.

Then set that learner a special homework task – ideally in place of another piece of homework being set for everyone else that evening. They should read the next few pages of the class read, then do one of the following:

1. Prepare to start the next shared reading.

2. Draw their own illustrations for those pages, to be shown during the class read.

3. Prepare a multiple choice quiz to ask everyone else what they think will happen in those pages, with one real event and three made-up ones.*

* If you set this last one, tear their paper so that each possible answer is on a separate slip, then read them out for the class in a random order. Then read them to the class yourself so the class are even less likely to detect the real answer from the intonation of their friend…

With this idea here, the combination of responsibility and freedom of expression will stoke your learner’s enthusiasm and commitment to both reading and the task.

Idea 2: Reading’s Twin

My biggest solution to being without books? Writing my own! I once found evidence that I’d begun writing stories at age 4, even before I’d learnt how to write – listen to the start of my interview with The TrueLife Podcast for that story, either on YouTube or your favourite podcast player.

We often forget how closely related the acts of reading and writing are. To read, we take words on a page and use them to imagine worlds in our minds. To write, we first imagine the worlds and then put down the words.

How to adapt this for your learners: The best way to set ‘writing a story’ as a homework task is to offer it as an alternative to something else. This way, you remove the pressure from the writing itself, and can present it as the fun alternative. Writing for pleasure leads to great writing – every successful novelist, scriptwriter or journalist is proof of that!

The task to “Write a story based on what we’ve been learning today” can be appended to literally any subject – e.g. “Write a story about…”

• Geography, location knowledge:
  “…an adventure in this country.”
  

• Geography, field work:
  “…trying to find some treasure – or someone!”
  

• Science, technology:
  “…characters who use this equipment/knowledge to survive.”
  

• Maths, fractions:
  “…a creature that splits up into smaller creatures whenever it gets cut in half – or quarters, or eighths…!”

Here, the fun of creating a story will strengthen the learner’s sense of enjoyment from writing, reading, and the stimulus subject.

Idea 3: Sod the System

Because my dad couldn’t afford brand new books, my main way of getting new reading material was to find books for sale in charity shops and car boot fares for 20p each. But of course, the majority of those books were for adult readers – hence my early love of Ian Fleming, Stephen King, and James Patterson, all before I hit double digits!

I’m using “sod” here in the gardening sense: cover with soil so that vibrant, strong plants can grow. The curriculum may not think your learners are ready for ‘grown-up’ fiction, but going beyond the curriculum will often give your learners the best chance to excel in their assessments.

How to adapt this for YOUR learners: It’s important to stress the word “YOUR” here. This idea will work best with those you know to already possess a real desire to read, but who are suffering a lack of material. These are the learners for whom reading a full-blown novel will feel like a cheeky secret and/or fill them with pride.

The idea is this: lend your learner(s) a book not marketed as a children’s book, saying, “I loved this book, and I think you’ll love it too. The government reckons you’re too young to read it, but I think you’ll get through it in a month.”

Of course, for this idea to work, it’s highly important to be aware of both their interests and their sensitivities. As a youngster, I easily devoured James Patterson’s Along Came a Spider, my young mind glossing over what I didn’t yet understand and enjoying the thrill of uncovering the bad guy. Now, as an adult, I’m aware how some scenes could have been triggering for readers who’d suffered certain trauma.

How do you know, then, what ‘grown-up’ books to lend to your learners?

The best answer is, Lend them a book you’ve genuinely enjoyed yourself!

If, however, your own bookshelf contains details you’d rather your learners didn’t see, do a little research to find ‘tamer’ options within the same genre.

For example, love the mystery thrillers of Patterson but don’t want to put graphic depictions of violence in your learners’ hands? Try some Agatha Christie yourself first, then pass that to your young booklover. You can usually pick up several of such books for less than a £/$ in yard sales, charity shops, etc.

I genuinely believe one of my defining moments as a young reader was when our school librarian snuck me a copy of Michael Crichton’s original Jurassic Park, rather than the slim, dumbed-down ‘book of the film’ found in our school library. I got through all Crichton’s 118,000 words in one week. That’s when you know you really love reading… $;-)

What are your thoughts on these ideas? Are there any you would add?

Reply or leave a comment to join the discussion, and help us all inspire more young learners to reap the rewards of recreational reading – whatever social background they come from.

Leave a comment

You can read my overall thoughts in my personal blog. But in this Education section, the topics have been…

• Motivating young readers

• Supporting SEN in ‘mainstream’ classes

• Comprehension vs Enjoyment

• Playing with words

The closing keynote was delivered by then-children’s laureate Joseph Coelho, the man for whom the word ‘poetry’ was made to alliterate with ‘passion’…

Playing with Words

Coelho began with the story of his early life, stressing the important roles that teachers and librarians played. For most of his youth, he didn’t consider himself a poet so much as a lover of words.

Along the way, he demonstrated the fun there is to be had playing with words – fun he’s since shared with thousands of children in schools and libraries all over. The thrust of his keynote was to encourage educators to rediscover this fun for themselves, then pass it on to their learners.

The first template he shared was the ‘One Word Poem’. Here, you give your learners a title, then ask them to write a poem of just one word. An example title might be, ‘The Day I Fell Off My Chair’, which could lead to the following:

The Day I Fell Off My Chair

Ouch!

You’ll find more examples of ‘One Word Poems’ in Coelho’s fantastic book How to Write Poems (NB: buy from LoveReading4Kids to send 25% of your payment to benefit school libraries). This book also contains the MORERAPS template, with which he crafted a poem live with the conference audience.

With MORERAPS, you decide on a subject, then use a different poetic technique for each line of an 8-line poem. The techniques are…

• Metaphor

• Onomatopoeia

• Rhyme

• Emotion

• Repetition

• Alliteration

• Personification

• Simile

At the conference, Coelho suggested the theme ‘teaching’. You can get a sense for how that went down by reading my personal blog – but for now, here’s my personal example…

Teaching

The Sun is there, but hidden behind clouds.

Whoosh!

The teacher, smiling, offers aid,
To learners frowning, not yet swayed…

Perseverance.

Smiling! Smiling? Smiling.

The mentor models, maturing modern minds modicum by modicum, minute by minute.

The clouds, unable to resist, part to let the Sun shine through.

For teaching is like the wind: sometimes invisible, yet always there, the means of moving life forward.

Not Convinced?

There’s actually some science behind Coelho’s ‘hacks’ for encouraging your learners to take an interest in words. Neuroscience identifies humanity’s innate love of patterns as apophenia.

Yes, this tendency can lead to neuroses – such as gambling addictions (believing the roulette ball will deliver a certain result after x spins) and superstition (expecting some misfortune on Friday 13^th). Some see the slightest hint of a pattern in the randomness of life and rush to conclude the improbable.

But it’s there in all of us. It’s how we remember the journeys we take to our regular destinations, the steps we follow to make our favourite drinks, the clothing combinations that will suit us.

It’s also how language works. We associate certain sounds with meaning, and then associate those sounds with letters. Jenny Davis described something similar to this process in her workshop on supporting SEN learners to read.

In fact, many words developed out of the sounds we make instinctively. Take the example ‘One Word Poem’ above. When pretty much any mammal sustains an injury, they make sounds that are easily loud and sustainable, such as “Aaaahh!” or “Owww!”

Most of us will then also hiss as we try to shut off the pain. The ‘ch’ sound, when drawn out, is such a restrictive hiss.

From this, it’s easy to see how a word like “Ouch!” developed.

The highly insightful Helen from the Happily Ever Teaching podcast* once suggested a brilliant literacy lesson involving this principle: invite your learners to handle various objects, and vocalise a sound to represent how it feels.

As they handle a dry leaf, for example, they may replicate the sound made by rubbing it with their fingers (“fffffff”), or the sound of scrunching it up (“kllkkllkkllk”). They could even vocalise their emotion when handling it – for some children “mmmm”, others maybe “ikkk!”

Then, for plenary, share some of the words that can be used in these contexts, and marvel with them at the similarities. “ffffff” is there in “leaf”; “kllkkllkkllk” is there in “crinkle”; “mmmm” moves into “magnificent”; “ikkk” is there in “sick”.

Finding patterns between words and the sounds they naturally express is an easy way to inject some fun into literacy.

* Sadly the Happily Ever Teaching podcast was discontinued in 2023. However, many of the team behind it went on to produce the story-led knowledge-rich teaching resources you get by joining the Epic Educators club – which you can learn more about by using the button below, and get 25% off if you join using the code LITCON4.

Explore the Epic Educator Club

Final Thought

Here’s a final tip for your shared reading – which I would say was Coelho-inspired, but for the fact you’ll also find it in All the Better to Read You With, which was published a few months before this litcon… $;-P

After reading a story with your learners, go back through it and ask them to pause you whenever they hear a word or phrase they like. They don’t have to say why – they don’t even have to know what it means. Let them just enjoy the words for the sounds they produce.

By labelling their highlights as ‘rhyme’, ‘alliteration’, ‘onomatopoeia’ etc after they’ve brought attention to them, the fun comes first – and then you’ll be able to smoothly move to creating some examples yourselves…

How do you nurture the love of sounds and words with your learners? Or do you find your learners don’t ‘fit the pattern’?

Reply to this post with your experience, I’d love to discuss it with you!

Leave a comment

Please forward this support to a colleague – they may use it as much, or more, than you.

You’ll then feel the intense satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped even more children reap the rewards of recreational reading. $;-)

You can read my overall thoughts in my personal blog. But in this Education section, the topics will be…

• Motivating young readers

• Supporting SEN in ‘mainstream’ classes

• Comprehension vs Enjoyment

• Playing with words

Among the breakout sessions was one on ‘Building a Reading for Pleasure Culture’ to be led by Educate columnist Jon Biddle – but alas, when Jon couldn’t attend due to a last-minute illness, former UKLA president and educational author David Reedy stepped in with a workshop on…

Reading Comprehension

And, as someone who had turned up for a workshop on reading for pleasure, I’ll be upfront: I went into this workshop feeling shortchanged. Helping children understand texts is completely different to helping them enjoy reading – isn’t it?

Do you need to question their understanding of a text in order for them to enjoy it? Or is it the other way around…?

I’ll get to that in a bit. But first, I want to ensure I’m not misunderstood: I’m not about to criticise David’s workshop. Not in the slightest. This workshop, like all of the work I’ve encountered of David’s to date, was the source of some immense insights, a taster of which I’ll share below.

I’m merely questioning whether a workshop on comprehension was, in the jargon of online shopping, a ‘suitable alternative’ to one on reading for pleasure.

David began by sharing the US National Institute for Literacy’s definition of ‘reading’: “a complex system of deriving meaning from print. It requires all of*:

1. an understanding of how phonemes, or speech sounds, are connected to print;

2. the ability to decode unfamiliar words;

3. the ability to read fluently;

4. sufficient background information and vocabulary to foster reading comprehension;

5. the development of appropriate active strategies to construct meaning from print;

6. the development and maintenance of a motivation to read.”

* From what I’ve been able to glean from my own follow-up study, David added these two emboldened words himself.

1–3 are covered by phonics, and 2–5 are covered by comprehension – yes, there’s some overlap, since decoding an unfamiliar word is pointless unless you can identify what the word means.

David’s theory, though, is that discussing comprehension with young readers is a way to hit point 6: such discussions raise their interest in what could come next, and so develop a motivation to read.

At the heart of his theory was a powerful truism: “You can’t teach comprehension, but you can teach strategies.”

He shared a list of strategies based on the works of Duke and Pearson and Tennent (see the photo above). For most of this workshop at least, David went on to concentrate on the ‘Questioning’ strategy, for which he recommended a three-pronged approach:

1. Looking Questions

Start by asking your learners questions which have easy answers in the text. For example, if you’ve just read a version of ‘The Three Little Pigs’, sample Looking Questions may be…

• What did the first pig use to build his house?

• Who blew some houses down?

• Which pig did the wolf visit last?

Although David didn’t quite say as much himself, the advantage of beginning with such Looking Questions is that they help the reader begin to get familiar with the text.

But! What if the reader doesn’t want to be familiar with the text? Do Looking Questions raise motivation? Or do they require it…?

2. Clue Questions

Move onto questions that require some deduction from the text, such as…

• How do you know the wolf is mean?

• How do you know the third pig is clever?

• How do you know the wolf is determined?

Such questions clearly require greater engagement with the text, and some learners will enjoy the thrill of ‘getting it’ when they successfully work out how the writer managed to lead them into thinking a certain way without being explicit.

But! What if the reader doesn’t want to engage with the text? What if the story bored them, and they aren’t prepared to give it any more time?

3. Thinking Questions

David suggested you finish with questions that could lead into a conversation – such as…

• Do you think the third pig should have lit the fire as the wolf came down the chimney?

• If you were the third pig, what would you have done?

• Does this story remind you of any others?

As everyone who’s ever attended my CPD training will know, that last one is a favourite of mine too. It’s even given as an example in All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure – though I believe it works best when (a) the story has been chosen to link in with the interests of your learners, and/or (b) your learners have mastered the art of finding links between stories and their interests.

But! What if the learner doesn’t want to talk about the text, or even can’t, because they lost interest before you got to the end?

Some Pretty Big “But”s

As a keen advocate for an oral approach to literacy, I heartily second David’s endorsement of the questioning strategy, and can fully attest to its usefulness. But again: is it really a suitable alternative to exploring how to build a ‘reading for pleasure’ culture?

Elsewhere, it seems David’s chief solution to most of the “But”s above would be to make sure you’re reading texts that have a reputation for being loved by children of their age. And I’ll admit that’s a helpful tip.

Here, though, is a type of question I propose you could add before David’s three above, and indeed before you even finish reading the first paragraph aloud with your learner(s).

And it’s a great type of question too when you’re reading a text you’re sure your learners will love – even if it hasn’t yet received critical acclaim…

0. Motivation Questions

As you go through the story, allow yourself to feel the interest, curiosity, and excitement that you want your learners to feel, and check that they’re with you.

For example…

• …as the three young pigs set out alone, ask, “Oo, do you think they’ll be safe? It can be scary going into a forest by yourself, can’t it… Shall we find out if they survive?”

• …when the wolf is huffing and puffing outside the first house, ask, “Oh, what do you think’s going to happen?! Do you want the wolf to get the pig? Shall we see if he does?”

• …when the wolf is about to climb down the chimney, ask, “Ah! Is he still going to get in? Are you enjoying this story? Shall we find out what happens?”

Note how every single one of these questions is, essentially, inviting your learners to commit to discovering the next part of the story. But these questions also make such a commitment appealing by highlighting their enjoyment of the story as you go along.

In short, I concur with David that the best way to help young readers develop their comprehension is through discussing the texts you share. But I’d like to add that this is a fantastic strategy for developing a ‘reading for pleasure’ culture too, especially when combined with indicators of enthusiasm (that’s yours as well as theirs) and built into the reading activity itself.

In fact, that’s pretty much the bedrock principle behind All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure. If you want to learn more and give it a try yourself, follow this link to order the book direct from the publisher’s website – and use code CompVsJoy to get 25% off.

Next up from the UKLA/NEU Primary Conference, though: a children’s laureate’s guide to encouraging learners to play with words…

Please forward this support to a colleague – they may use it as much, or more, than you.

You’ll then feel the intense satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped even more children reap the rewards of recreational reading. $;-)

Got a question or comment about any of the above?

Please get in touch – I’m here to support you. $:-)

You can read my overall thoughts in my personal blog. But in this Education section, the topics will be…

• Motivating young readers

• Supporting SEN in ‘mainstream’ classes

• Comprehension vs Enjoyment

• Playing with words

Among the breakout sessions was one on ‘Teaching Reading to Pupils with Autism Spectrum Condition, ADHD and PDA’, led by Jenny Davis, the Communication, Language, and Literacy Lead at Springhallow School.

Because this is often a hot topic when I lead CPD sessions, and also because I work as a tutor in alternative provision where most of my learners carry these labels, I thought this could be an ideal session to attend for ideas on…

Supporting SEN in ‘Mainstream’ Classes

Jenny began by pointing out the key differences between those with any SEN, and those we think of as ‘mainstream’. Regardless of whether the person is diagnosed with autism, ADHD, or PDA, they often struggle in the areas of…

• social understanding

• communication

• sensory processing

These factors are all intertwined, of course, but we often focus on just one at a time.

For example, when someone with SEN interprets a joke as something offensive, they may respond violently. One response to this might be to talk them around to the ‘right’ idea, and let the victim know the aggressor “didn’t mean it, they just don’t understand jokes the same way we do.”

That’s focusing on social understanding. But the fact that most SEN people will understand if given the time (as you discover when you offer them that talk) suggests it may have been more a case of them responding instantly to the stimulus of the joke before they could properly process it. In other words, it’s as much about sensory processing as it is understanding.

I used the word “may” there because, as Jenny also pointed out, all these conditions are a spectrum, and every individual is different. As a result, they require great flexibility among a wide variety of approaches.

And that is where the session hit its sturdiest bone of contention: how can you be flexible within the rigidity of your school’s framework?

Here’s where I offered advice that was well-received during the session, not least by Jenny herself:

Story-led learning naturally differentiates, because every listener processes the story in their own way. It then naturally becomes self-motivating: they’re invested in a world they created, and will be keen to spend time exploring it.

All you then need do is allow your learners to explore that world in their own way, with a plenary to share their different approaches at the end.

The phrase ‘All you then need to’ might at first seem like an underestimation. But there are two approaches I take which work invariably, though they often work best when used one after the other:

1. Take suggestions and lead the group’s exploration

If you don’t instantly shoot down any idea, and enthusiastically test every theory, you’ll let every individual learner see that their ideas are valid. This builds their self-confidence, which then carries them into considering alternatives if they’re proved wrong.

2. Allow the learners to split up as individuals or groups of their own choice

I know many teachers baulk at this idea, but the fact is one of the quickest ways to shut down any learner, whether SEN or mainstream, is to force them to work alongside someone they don’t want to be with. On the other hand, if you trust that the story has given them the motivation, they’ll work far more efficiently and effectively with friends. You may need to check in with them to keep them on task, but you’ll typically find they’re still on subject.

You can use the story-led approach for any subject, including Maths and Science. That’s what Korky Paul, the teachers of the Happily Ever Teaching podcast, and myself set up the Epic Educators Club to prove. I aim to cover various examples in this blog over time, but if you want some ready-to-go lesson plans to get started right now, follow this link to check out the Club.

The rest of this session, though, focused on teaching SEN learners to read. One of my favourite soundbites from Jenny’s fabulous advice was this: “Auditory processing can be low even if they communicate eloquently.”

That really hit home to me, since my father suffered from slow auditory processing. He wasn’t deaf, often wanting the telly turning down – but his first response to most questions would usually be, “Pardon?”

He wanted you to think he hadn’t heard so he could snatch some time to process your words.

The problem, Jenny identified, is that we often rush SEN learners into phonics before they’ve learned to correctly identify the order or source of sounds.

Phonics involves matching sounds to visual patterns. If a learner can’t yet process that a sound has come from a certain direction, and/or the order of a pattern of sounds, they’re not ready for phonics.

Start from there, and you risk stoking the anxiety, angst, and rage that is believed typical for SEN learners.

Luckily, though, there are many ways you can help your entire class develop their ‘phonological awareness’ as one. Music lessons, sonic pattern games, adding sound effects to stories… These are all excellent precursors to phonics – or, if you’re working with a class including learners who have fallen behind, might help them catch up.

Please do give this a try, and/or…

Leave a comment

…to let me know your thoughts on this strategy.

Next up from the UKLA/NEU Primary Conference: comprehension vs enjoyment when it comes to reading…

Please forward this support to a colleague – they may use it as much, or more, than you.

You’ll then feel the intense satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped even more children reap the rewards of recreational reading. $;-)

Got a question or comment about any of the above?

Please get in touch – I’m here to support you. $:-)

You can read my overall thoughts in my personal blog. But in this Education section, the topics will be…

• Motivating young readers

• Supporting SEN in ‘mainstream’ classes

• Comprehension vs Enjoyment

• Playing with words

The Conference began with a keynote from Professor Teresa Cremin, lead researcher on the OU’s Reading for Pleasure initiative. Her main theme seemed to be…

Motivating Young Readers

Professor Cremin is a big name amongst evangelists of Reading for Pleasure. While the OECD, Institute of Education, et al consistently prove that recreational reading is “the single most important indicator of a child’s future success”, Cremin’s work has (like mine) been more practical: What can be done to increase recreational reading?

Her work is also extensive. Even she struggled to sum it up within the time allotted for her keynote! As such, she went at such a pace that I fear many of her best insights didn’t get the attention they deserved – or needed.

So here, I’ll share those of Cremin’s brilliant insights for which I can elucidate further…

Cremin’s Point: One of the greatest motivating factors for young learners is an element of responsibility.

I believe this point is well-known, at least in the UK. I’d say the majority of schools I visit run a scheme which pairs each learner aged 9+ with a younger schoolgoer, charging them to be a ‘guardian angel’ of sorts.

Responsibility seems to be an intrinsic trigger for maturity. But when considering ways to encourage Reading for Pleasure at home, the only suggestion Cremin managed to share was to set elder learners the task of reading to younger siblings.

There are three obvious issues with this advice that Cremin didn’t have time to explore. Firstly… what if the learner is an only child?!

Secondly… what if they’re the youngest sibling?

And finally… what if they’re a struggling reader?

Chip’s Tip 1: Remove reliance on a live audience

Those first two issues can be overcome simply by setting the homework to practice and/or record the story. This could be done with siblings, but doesn’t have to be. It could be preparation for their work with children back in school, either younger ones or their peers.

Even if they don’t have siblings, there’s a good chance their parents will see them enjoying their story rehearsals…

Chip’s Tip 2: Remove reliance on the text

When setting the homework, make it clear that the learners don’t have to use the words on the page. They can make up their own words based on any illustrations, and/or rely on their memory of your reading of the story.

This may seem counterintuitive – isn’t the aim to get them reading? It is, and this approach does, as I’ve shared in this post here, and in more detail in my book All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure (where you’ll find case studies with examples of it working, even with EAL).

In brief, the secret is that you connect their enjoyment of the story with the book, then allow that enjoyment to heighten – which simultaneously strengthens that connection. Soon they’ll be personally motivated to improve their reading so they can access more stories…

Cremin’s Point: Choose books that showcase the joy of reading, such as Mariajo Ilustrajo’s I Love Books

Cremin took us through the whole of this book, which begins with a character who hates books and feels forced to read. It’s an incredible book: the story will connect with many a reluctant/resistant reader, while the illustrations ignite intrigue.

There’s just one issue Cremin didn’t have time to cover: What if a learner is also a struggling reader, and/or refuses to even hold a book?

Chip’s Tip: Shared Reading is NOT Guided Reading

Reading aloud with your learners, taking the time to exchange thoughts with them, exploring the illustrations together… That’s where the engagement comes, followed soon by their motivation to seek those pleasures independently.

Great though Ilustrajo’s book is (and it is great – I love it!), older readers will likely detect the moral a mile off, and the more resistant readers will likely go on the defensive. I therefore recommend using this approach with books that similarly celebrate creativity without such obvious moralising – such as the equally excellent Sir Charlie Stinky Socks series by Kristina Stephenson.

Cremin’s Point: Good writers aren’t necessarily those who spell correctly, but those who convey meaning effectively

I wholeheartedly agree with Cremin on this point, and was sad that she had to skip over any advice she may have given about how to encourage this among learners.

I’ve already exhausted my time for this article, though, and feel this is a larger field of worms to wrestle with – so you know what? That can be my focus for the series after this one… $;-)

Next up from the UKLA/NEU Primary Conference, though: Supporting SEN learners in ‘mainstream’ classes…

Please forward this support to a colleague – they may use it as much, or more, than you.

You’ll then feel the intense satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped even more children reap the rewards of recreational reading. $;-)

Got a question or comment about any of the above?

Please get in touch – I’m here to support you. $:-)

Right now, though, let’s release the sounds…

When helping educators attract their learners’ engagement in a story or class book, there are typically three main reasons why learners aren’t interested:

• content

• length

• language

In the last of this three-part series, we’re looking at…

Language

By sheer coincidence, just two days ago before writing this, I was leading a workshop for teachers of T-Level Early Years & Education students, and this question came up:

“How do you encourage children to love reading when they possess a level of vocabulary too low for the texts on offer?”

I’ve already covered a similar topic in my post-World Book Day series; the article on how to engage learners with [English as] an Additional Language revealed my ‘Bigging It Up’ technique for drawing audiences into stories even if they understand nothing you’re saying. So I could end this article here and simply direct you to that one.

But there’s actually a little more I can say about it here, even more than you’ll find in the educators handbook All the Better to Read You With, and which that T-Level teacher gave me the opportunity to practice sharing with you the other Friday. $;-)

That little more is this: start by telling stories, as opposed to shared reading or guided reading. Yes, the goal is to inspire independent readers, but I promise you: telling stories entirely orally will get your learners there far faster than those alternatives.

Here’s why.

With guided reading, the young reader largely leads the tone. The focus is usually on their ability to read, with a bit of comprehension thrown in every now and then. The comprehension is naturally tougher, because the reader has been focusing on decoding.

With shared reading, the words are not yours. Yes, you can use the ‘Reverse Bigging It Up’ principle mentioned in the article above – and that’s extremely powerful. But it’s a far slower technique for building contextual vocab learning, because of course you’re dumbing it down rather than bigging it up.

With storytelling, you’re looking your learners in the eye and taking them with you. You can gauge their current level of understanding, big up your phrases as you go, and even throw in the odd comprehension question totally naturally as if it’s part of the story.

You’re leading your learners through the process of contextual vocabulary learning by example.

Here’s an example from one of my ‘greatest hits’, a story I’ve found is guaranteed to appeal to virtually all audiences of any age in any situation…

“With his future wife sitting behind him on the saddle, the prince rode straight home. But unfortunately, the straight route home took him through the garden of a giant. Not just any giant, either, but a mean, mighty, magical giant. A giant who really didn’t like trespassers in his garden.

“That giant leapt in front of the prince’s party, causing the horse to rear up on its hind legs, the prince to open his mouth wide with terror, and the princess to desperately clutch her tiara as she fell rapidly to the ground.

“But the princess didn’t hit the ground. Nor did the prince close his mouth, and the horse’s hooves never came back down. Instead, they remained in those exact positions, but with their skin and clothes changed to a pale grey colour.

“They had been petrified.

“Does anyone here know what petrified means?”

Sometimes I get the right answer there. But more often than not, someone answers ‘really scared’, to which I respond…

“That’s exactly what I used to think too! But when I first heard this story, I learned that being petrified means being made to go grey, hard, and still – like a statue. The prince, his fiancée, and his horse had all been turned into stone.”

It’s true, you could do something like the above with shared reading. But with most books, you’re unlikely to find a passage where the writer describes what’s happened, and then labels it with higher level vocab so neatly for you afterward.

For example, George Dasent, who wrote the English translation of this oral tale from the Norwegian folklorists (Asbjörnsen and Moe) who first captured it in print (at least so far as we know), only described the same scene thus:

“But when they had gone a good bit on their way, they passed close by a steep hillside, like a wall, where the giant's house was, and there the giant came out, and set his eyes upon them, and turned them all into stone, princes and princesses and all.”

With storytelling, you can add in the higher vocab as soon as you feel your learners can take it – and chances are, if you use this method, you’ll find them ready to take it earlier than you think.

“But wait! some educators quickly call. “That’s storytelling without books. We want them reading. How is oral literacy going to achieve that?”

It’s a valid question, and one even I asked myself once upon a time. My search for the answer is what led to me write the English Hub handbook, All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure. You’ll find a few case studies in there of learners who heard me telling stories for as little as an hour, and whose parents reported them subsequently picking up books eagerly for the first time – including some with EAL.

In my experience, though, most educators are happy to accept that talking through stories with learners is a great precursor to their writing – both to work out the words they want to write on the page, and also to spark their imaginations.

But it’s actually that same ability of storytelling to spark the imagination, alongside the flexibility it affords you with the language, that fires up the learner’s curiosity to find more stories in books.

And best of all? Oral storytelling and fiction reading both have a key thing in common: they’re word-based creativity. That means the books your learners are guided to via storytelling won’t be graphic novels, encyclopaedias, magazines etc. They’ll be books where a story is told primarily through print. And that’s ideal, because a 2018 study found learners of all ages with the best reading skills were those who chose to read fiction.

I hope this series has inspired you to try storytelling and/or shared reading as your learners’ routes into reading. If you’re still unsure about your own storytelling and shared reading abilities, though, there are a few ways to get more support. First, if you haven’t already, make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter: story-led learning is what this is all about!

Second, please talk to me! Reply to my newsletters, or use the comment button below. Let me know how you’re getting on, or if there are any areas you’d like extra tips on.

And finally… Remember how I said above that most books aren’t written in a way that sits neatly with the storytelling approach? Well there are a few I know that are… because I wrote them!

The best starting point is All the Better to Read You With, because that handbook includes storytelling techniques you can use during shared reading, stories written using the ‘Bigging It Up’ principle, and lesson plans aimed at guiding your learners from shared reading to independent reading of their own choice.

But the entire Fables & Fairy Tales series produced by myself and illustrator Korky Paul is also built around the ‘Bigging It Up’ principle – and the Epic Educator editions are especially designed for your shared reading. If you fancy using stories to teach your whole curriculum, not just reading for pleasure, then they are the best way to feed two birds with one scone.

And for joining me here, you can get 25% off either All the Better, a whole year of Epic Educator editions, or both. Just hit the button(s) below and use MAKELISTEN2 at checkout.

Get All the Better to Read You With

Join the Epic Educator Club

Please let me know how ‘Bigging It Up’ impacts your learners’ engagement with stories and reading – I’d love to hear your stories!

Coming soon: insights from the UKLA Primary Literacy Conference.

When helping educators attract their learners’ engagement in a story or class book, there are typically three main reasons why learners aren’t interested:

• content

• length

• language

In this three-part series, we’ll explore how to overcome each of these challenges. This time, we’re looking at…

Length

“Can anyone suggest any books that will get my whole class hooked to the very end? I’ve already tried a lot of the recommendations here, and usually they are good for the first chapter or two. But then many of the boys get bored and act up.”

This 👆 will likely be a very familiar story to many educators. I guess as much because I see words to this effect in virtually every educators’ forum I’m part of online. They’re complaining that, on the rare occasions their children get engaged by Chapter 1 of a class text, the boys (and it’s almost always “the boys”) lose interest before the halfway mark.

Me, I’m sure it isn’t just “the boys” who struggle with reading stamina. The wonderful Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves of the Manchester Institute of Education recently facilitated one of the most vibrant and insightful workshops at the UKLA/NEU Primary Literacy Conference, in which she explored how children often play up to expectations. In this case, we expect boys to be boisterous when bored – so that’s how they show it. Maybe the girls are bored too, but they’re much more polite about it.

(There’ll be a series on the insights I gathered from the Primary Literacy Conference soon, by the way – stay tuned! If you missed it, though, you can already read/hear something of my experience from this week’s Pepys Show.)

Any which way, though, the question remains: How can we keep learners enthralled all the way through a multi-chapter novel, which is expected to last them an entire term?

Most educators expect it’s to do with the book – and in part, they’re probably right. Some books are exceptional at capturing and holding the interest of the wide spectrum of learners you have in your class. But what might seem like a magic bullet with one class might be a rotten tomato with others.

But here’s the analogy Rebekah Owen and I used in our book, All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure: when a child is taught to walk, they don’t cross the room a few times, then get taken straight out for a walk to the park. They get put in a pram, taken to the park, and then released to run around it – usually several times a month, and for several months before we expect them to walk the journey themselves.

The joy of the park is of course a metaphor for the joy of a story. However, it’s important to note this: the joy of a story is really only truly known after it’s finished.

It’s the ending of the story that brings the satisfaction of knowing Ah, this is where it was all headed… This is the reward I get for investing my time in going on this journey.

An oft-quoted phrase is, “The journey is more important than the destination.” Anyone walking down the aisle for their wedding, rushing to A&E, or desperate for the loo will likely disagree. Joking aside, the journey is important, sure – but only in the context of the destination.

What does this mean in relation to enthralling learners with reading? Well, once we’re sure our learners can cope with an early phonics reader (walking through the room), we typically give them three or four story-based picture books (walks in the park) – but then we move as swiftly as possible onto chapter books (walking to the park).

But having just three, four, even six short stories across a year is barely enough for a learner to understand the joy of hearing a story in its entirety. To truly build that reading stamina, they need to experience how a wide variety of beginnings relate to their associated endings, so they can get more adept at identifying the clues dropped by writers in the early stages of a story.

Those are the clues that writers drop to earn the reader’s investment in the story – investment that we yearn to have rewarded. Book-wise, that manifests as motivation to reach the end.

So there it is: If your learners are struggling with reading stamina, then choose short stories as your class read. You’ll be moving onto novels in no time.

Those of you working with learners under the age of 7? Remember: the three–six picture books you cover across a year are nowhere near enough. Why not try the Little Miss and Mr Men series? Or Spot the Dog? It will be easy to segue from books such as these into slightly longer stories, such as those by Beatrix Potter or the entire Winnie and Wilbur collection.

For those needing inspiration for ages 7+, follow this link for a fantastic list by the BookTrust. Most of the books in this list will also be suitable for older learners, though follow the “S” hyperlink at the top of the page to find a list of short stories more specifically curated for teens.

Since Winnie and Wilbur was mentioned, I think it’s only fair to mention that Winnie’s illustrator Korky Paul works with me to produce the Fables & Fairy Tales series, which puts two engaging short stories into the world every month. The books are written using the Bigging It Up principle I talk about here, making them accessible and appealing to the widest range of readers aged 7+ (and often listeners aged 4+).

There is even a Fables & Fairy Tales Club, which sends its members each new book as soon as they’re released, along with bonus goodies. The Epic Educator Club goes yet another step further, containing plans for using the stories to teach knowledge-rich lessons in a wide array of subjects – and always English, Maths, and Science.

If you’ve read this far, I think you deserve a discount code to get 25% off one of those Epic Educator Club memberships – so follow this link to sign up and use MAKELISTEN2 at checkout.

(Psst – you can also use that code to get 25% off a copy of All the Better to Read You With from the publisher’s website. After all, that’s another collection of short stories with accompanying lessons…)

Please let me know how increasing the use of short stories with your learners impacts their reading stamina – I’d love to hear your stories!

Next up: blasting through language barriers – what to do when your learners are put off by the writer’s chosen vocab…

When helping educators attract their learners’ engagement in a story or class book, there are typically three main reasons why learners aren’t interested:

• content

• length

• language

Over a series of three articles, we’ll explore how to overcome each of these challenges, beginning with…

Content

For World Book Day 2024, I visited a baker’s dozen schools (not all in the same day, I should add – WBD is the longest day of the year after Christmas!). As usual, the most common feedback from teachers after my sessions with their learners was a variation of, “I’ve never seen them sit so engaged for so long!”

But this year, I had a new question I liked to ask those teachers in return:

“Was that the sort of story you would expect them to enjoy?”

The suspicion behind this question arose from comments made by a secondary school Head of English in my WBD season – but I soon discovered the answer across both secondaries and primaries to be an almost universal, “No!”

For example: the most popular books among a group aged 12–13 were Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter. I gave them an Asian ghost story which doubles as a tragic love story. When the teacher tried to dismiss them, most of the students came to me first to say that was the best story they’d ever heard.

Another example: a group aged 6–7 would only listen to storybooks if the characters were animals. I gave them a King Arthur story. They were riveted throughout, and all joined in with moments of audience participation – to their teacher’s surprised delight.

In both cases, I had actually asked the learners to help me choose a story to tell. But I hadn’t asked them for something specific like, “What do you want your story to be about?” Instead, I stuck to generic questions – such as…

·       Do you prefer action or funny?

·       Spooky or adventurous?

·       Clever or nonsense?

The easiest way to try this yourself is to write these categories on envelopes, each containing the title of a story or book, and then invite your learners to vote.

In classrooms, the “Transferable Vote” option is one of the best for ensuring every learner feels they have helped with the decision. That works like this:

1.      Stand everyone up.

2.      Take a vote for 3+ categories.

3.      Everyone who voted for the winning category of that vote gets to sit down.

4.      The least popular category is removed.

5.      If there is still a choice, everyone still standing gets to vote on the remaining categories.

6.      Repeat steps 3–5 till you have a winner out of two.

If you have more time, though, a stronger option is presented in All the Better to Read You With: print off various copies of just the first page of the books you could use, give your learners time to read them, and then invite your learners to vote. You can also invite learners to make short presentations to encourage others to vote for their choice. (This option is particularly recommended if you’re selecting a class book for an entire term.)

By using a technique like this, you’re giving your learners agency over the story they hear, albeit within set limits. Another way to describe that agency is the investment of choice – and as we know from personal experience, if we invest in something, we care about it.

Gathering that investment is only half of my technique, though. The other is to let your learners believe they’re getting this opportunity to invest as a reward.

Here’s something you could say to do that – though feel free to adapt this ‘script’ for your own teaching style… and your learners!

“You folks have worked so hard and so well for the last few days, I think you deserve a treat. But I want it to be a treat that every single one of you is definitely going to love. So I’m going to do something different for you that I don’t usually do with my classes: I’m going to let you choose your treat…”

Please let me know how you get on with this technique – I’d love to hear your stories!

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If you’d like the world’s most complete and dependable lesson scheme for encouraging your learners to read, please ask your favourite bookshop for a copy of All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure.

 Next up: hooking your learners into a story no matter its length…

In the schools I visit, primary and secondary, I regularly meet teachers who have set their learners a task along the lines of…

Educators in UK primary settings using Talk for Writing may recognise this as the ‘Innovation Stage’: your learners take a tale they’ve read or heard, make a small adaptation, then write that down.

It makes sense as a task. Your learners have a scaffold, one they may even have enjoyed. They don’t really need to do much. It’s like painting by numbers, but switching the paints to colours of your choice. The perfect blend of creativity and guided form. Right?

So why do many educators find their learners struggling with such a task?

I’ve a couple of theories. First, there’s no motivation. There’s already a version of the story out there, and it was good enough to entertain them and/or their peers. Why reinvent the wheel?

Second… in every other context, we tend to discourage plagiarism – so when their teacher tells them to actively plagiarise, a part of them should be forgiven for wondering if it’s a trick! Even if they don’t know how to express that feeling, it could still be inhibiting them.

Do either/both these theories sound true to you? Fortunately, no matter the reason, I’ve found a solution I can share with you here…

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But first, please know that you’re not alone. Talk for Writing is enormously popular in the UK, probably the most common writing scheme I come across in my visits to primary schools, but pretty much every educator using it says the same: Phase 1, ‘Imitation’, is brilliant for encouraging engagement from learners as they copy repeated phrases linked with actions, understanding Story Maps, etc – but ‘Innovation’ still seems too great a leap.

In fact, when I wrote the EU’s guidance on storytelling in the classroom, I was able to reference reports in the National Strategies Archive from teachers noting that the two final TfW phases (of the three…) were “the least easy to implement”. I’d found these online – but the Archive has since disappeared…

As a writer myself, though, I love challenges like this. Here’s the opening to a story I wrote for English Hub’s educator handbook, All the Better to Read You With – see if you can work out what it was based on…

A fox took a stroll in a wood one day
When a tiger leapt out in the fox’s way.
“My favourite food!” the tiger said,
And bared all the teeth in its stripey head.

Remind you of anything? What if we swap the fox for a mouse, and the tiger for a large brown-haired creature with two curved horns, bright orange eyes, and a slimy black tongue…?

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It won’t surprise me if you didn’t need my prompt. Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo has sold over 13 million copies, regularly tops ‘Reader’s Favourite’ lists, and was recently found to be the most common first book for children in a UK survey.

But here’s a question for you: Which came first? My story or Julia’s?

Julia’s rhyme came first. I deliberately wrote my version to match her metre and rhyme scheme. But the story is far, far older.

And in fact, Julia knew this. She’s very honest about it. Read her interview in The Guardian from 2020, and you’ll see her mention the Chinese folk tale of the fox and the tiger that she used for inspiration.

Julia’s a dab hand at innovating. Her very first picture book, A Squash and a Squeeze, was based on a Yiddish tale. But she’s not the only one. Mention We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to any teacher or parent today, and they’ll likely tell you that’s a Michael Rosen story – even though the book’s illustrator Helen Oxenbury admits to painting cover art for the folk singer who taught the ballad to Michael after bringing it from US to the UK.

Julia Donaldson. Michael Rosen. Millionaires that your learners are likely to recognise. And how did they make their fame and fortune?

By doing the exact same Innovation exercise you’re asking your learners to do!

The excitement this knowledge sparks among primary learners can be replicated just as easily with older learners. Twilight? That’s just Juliet meeting a vampiric Romeo. The Hunger Games? Those ‘tributes’ would’ve been in the Minotaur’s labyrinth in Ancient Greece. The Girl of Ink and Stars? She could be following in the footsteps of Mulan.

So the next time you invite your learners to adapt an existing story, let them know you’re asking them to do something that could literally – and literarily – make them rich and famous. $;-)

If you try this with your learners, please let me know how they get on!

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And if you’d like to read the entirety of my Gruffalo adaptation, along with eight other stories, associated lesson plans, and guidance on reading like a storyteller, ask your local bookshop for a copy of All the Better to Read You With by Chip Colquhoun and Rebekah Owen, with a cover by Winnie the Witch’s Korky Paul!

“We have a large proportion of EAL children who haven’t been learning English very long. Any tips for engaging those in storytelling or reading – or at all?”

This has been a popular question for a while in my home country of the UK, though I popped “[English]” in square brackets because I’m pretty sure the same must happen elsewhere – refugees in Germany, for example. Is it at all possible to get learners hanging on your every word when they maybe only understand 30–50% of them?

When they ask this, I reckon most teachers expect an answer along the lines of, “Use facial expressions worthy of Rowan Atkinson!” or “Learn puppetry!” or “Try interpretive dance!” It’s certainly true that children are often enthralled without the need for words.

But such advice would focus on performance – and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post (and at greater length in the book All the Better to Read You With), that is not synonymous with enthralling storytelling. What follows is a swift summary of the argument…

Performers enthral by putting on a talented sensory display. Storytelling enthrals by prompting the audience to invest in creating the story inside their own minds.

I’m not suggesting for one minute that performances can’t be enthralling and/or empowering – the best usually are. But storytelling is intrinsically both enthralling and empowering.

Enthralling because… when you invest in things, you care about them (money in property, time in relationships, etc). The same is true for the imagination.

Empowering because… being assured that their own experience of the story is valid means everyone in the audience feels a sense of self-worth.

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This was the basis for the ‘Bigging It Up’ principle that I developed early on in my storytelling career, took into my writing, and explored at length in ABRYW. If you invite that imaginative investment early on in a story, then it doesn’t matter how greatly your audience has mastered your language – you’ll soon bring them up to the same level as you.

Here’s a step-by-step guide.

1. Choose a suitable story.

The best stories for these purposes are those that…

• regularly return to similar scenes, maybe even with similar action.
  e.g. pretty much every fairy tale with the number 3 in the title!
  

• involve familiar objects and/or characters.
  e.g. stories with everyday animals, local settings, etc.
  

• are already known to your learners.

That last one is particularly powerful for Additional Language learners. Do some research to find common stories from their part of the world, that their grown-ups or grand-grown-ups have shared with them, and they’ll be able to engage far faster – because they can already picture it with their minds’ eyes.

2. Begin your story using language that everyone in your audience can grasp.

Think of it as the ‘lowest common denominator’. This can also include pictures, provided they are clear and recognisable.

Here’s an example, taken from my story ‘Fit for the Moon’ (currently out-of-print, but soon to be re-released (ED: though, it turns out, there’s 1 left in stock on Amazon at the time of writing…)):

   …in a flash, the trees changed into a dress that was exactly size 8.

   Excitedly, the Sun took the dress to the Moon for her to try on.

   But when she did, the dress looked really baggy. Like, really baggy. …

   … He really wanted to marry her, so he wasn’t going to give up.

3. As you return to scenes, characters, and actions, gradually up the vocabulary level.

Here’s an extract taken from further on in ‘Fit for the Moon’…

  …in a flash, the sands transformed into a skirt that was exactly size 6.

   Eagerly, the Sun took the skirt to the Moon for her to try on.

   But when she did, the dress looked really baggy. Like, extremely baggy. …

   … He was desperate to marry her – so he would give it one more go.

And here’s one from even further in…

  …in a flash, the diamonds metamorphosed into some trousers that were exactly size 4.

   Earnestly, the Sun took the trousers to the Moon for her to try on.

   But when she did, the dress looked really baggy. I mean, excessively baggy. …

   The Sun felt deflated. He had tried and tried and earnestly endeavoured …

What’s going on?

Because your learners have the pictures in their minds’ eyes, they already know what the story looks like. So when you describe that scene using vocab they’ve never heard before, they already know what they mean.

Put another way, you’ve attracted their imaginative investment by getting them to create the story in their own heads – and now you’re paying it back with interest. $;-)

My example above is a refrain story (i.e. it repeats a similar action several times, a la ‘The Three Little Pigs’), but Bigging It Up can be achieved even within a single line. Let’s hone in closer on one of those extracts…

…when she did, the dress looked really baggy. Like, extremely baggy.

The use of “Like” and the emphasis on “extremely” make it very clear for anyone reading or listening that this is another way of saying “really baggy”. Like, it’s a more pertinent description than “really baggy.”

Storytelling vs Reading

Bigging It Up is easy when you’re telling a story using your own words, words you’re choosing on the spot. But it can be done when reading any book too, when used in combination with the keyring skill I introduced in this post here: paying attention to your audience.

If you read a passage from a book and notice one or more of your learners looking blank, just take a moment to rephrase it in your own words. It’s almost like you’re using Bigging It Up in reverse.

You don’t have to draw attention to the fact you’re doing this, just let it happen naturally. You’ll likely find this easier than you first think. We all repeat ourselves in everyday conversation to emphasise our point. Saying the same thing again, perhaps with clearer words, can make our point more powerful.

Once you’ve helped your audience to picture the scene, however, you’ll find you need to use this ‘Reverse Bigging’ technique less and less.

I’d love to know how you get on with this technique! Or, if there’s another area of literacy your learners are struggling with, perhaps that could be a future topic for one of these posts? Either way, please…

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“It feels like we’re doing the best we can here in school, but of course then they go home and they’re given no encouragement to read at all. Book bags are coming back unopened. We’ve tried ‘Reading Picnics’, but they ultimately just turn into ‘Picnics’. Any ideas how we can engage families at home with reading?”

I’m often booked by schools with learners who are struggling with literacy, and so it’s sadly very often that I hear a question like this one. Teachers, TAs, and reading volunteers may be modelling great reading practices in school, but how can they overcome the negativity around reading that learners face once they exit through the school gates?

Of course, schools with such issues are often in communities with such issues. Grown-ups in these communities will often claim, “My child’s just not interested in reading.” But low levels of literacy among grown-ups often results in barriers to reading in the home.

If the grown-ups themselves struggle to read, they’re more inclined to seize upon the slightest hint of distraction in their child, and use it as an excuse to curtail or forgo the activity. It’s not really about the child’s lack of interest – it’s the fear of showing their own lack of skill, both to the school and their child.

I’m not for a minute suggesting this is deliberate act. It is far more likely a subconscious process for self-preservation, and one that does in fact have its benefits: children should look up to the grown-ups in their homes. And most grown-ups will readily acknowledge the importance of reading, with little awareness of how their own behaviours might be affecting their children’s ability to enjoy and progress with the skill.

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By far the best way I’ve found to blow these barriers to biscuit crumbs is to begin by letting grown-ups witness the children in their care engaging in the sheer joy of stories and reading. The ‘Reading Picnic’ idea is a fantastic example of how this can be done – but rather than expecting grown-ups to read to their children, flip it around so the children tell stories to their grown-ups.

Did you spot the subtle synonym switch there? When your learners “tell stories” to their grown-ups, that may involve reading – if the learners are confident readers. But it could just as easily involve the learners telling the story of a book from memory, engaging their grown-ups in a conversation about the story – and that’s something pretty much every learner can do, whatever their literacy level.

If you try this, do ensure your learners have their books nearby, even if they don’t read from them – and even if there aren’t any pictures to show beyond the front cover. This makes it very clear where their enthusiasm is rooted, so the grown-ups leave with no doubt that their children took pleasure from a book.

And yes, “pretty much every learner”. Learners as young as 4 can retell a story. Non-verbal learners who love to draw can take their grown-ups on a visual tour of a tale. Even learners with high physical or speech impediments will usually show some expression of delight at seeing or feeling a book they’ve enjoyed hearing, or a puppet/picture of one of its characters.

A step up from the ‘Reading Picnic’ is the event I described in the EU’s guidance on storytelling for schools as ‘the Storytelling Bazaar’. This is an alternative to theatrical presentations to grown-ups: instead of the grown-ups sitting assembly-style and watching their children on stage, they visit a number of ‘stalls’, each with two or more learners taking it in turns to tell stories, either on their own or in groups.

Amy Scott Robinson and I devised the Storytelling Bazaar primarily as a way for grown-ups to enjoy the stories their children had created in workshops we’d delivered in their schools – Nick Gibb MP, the Schools Minister in 2016, enjoyed one of these at St Andrew’s School in Soham where he went on to deliver his speech for National Storytelling Week that same year. Amy and I were trading as ‘Snail Tales’ at the time. $;-)

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The Storytelling Bazaar works well because, instead of having one shot to get their performance right in front of 100+ grown-ups, each learner has multiple opportunities to present to small groups. That means they feel less pressure, and have in-built rehearsal time – we always give grown-ups a map to help them find their child’s ‘stall’, which includes a large disclaimer at the front saying, “DO NOT VISIT YOUR CHILD FIRST – you will see them at their best if you make them your third/fourth stop.”

But even though we created the Storytelling Bazaar for learners to tell stories of their own making, there’s no reason you can’t adapt it for them to tell stories you’ve told them, or read to them, or that they’ve read themselves. In fact, do the latter, and you’ll have a veritable celebration of reading for pleasure that grown-ups can’t ignore!

I’m sure you could float the Titanic on the number of joyful tears shed by grown-ups at events like these. When they sit on a mat and look up at their children, who are confidently and excitedly sharing the joy they’ve found in an act of creativity… Seeing their children empowered has a profound impact.

Such an activity is just a start, of course, albeit a powerful one. You’ll also need to put in a fair amount of preparation with your learners – e.g. by using the Yes/No, Try Again game from the previous post in this series…

But I strongly encourage you to think of replacing your next ‘Family Assembly’, ‘Family Engagement Day’, or even your Christmas Nativity with an activity like one of these ‘Reading Picnics’ or ‘Storytelling Bazaars’. Let the power of storytelling and story sharing show what it can do for literacy in your community.

I’d love to know how you get on with these ideas! Or, if there’s another area of literacy your learners are struggling with, perhaps that could be a future topic for one of these posts? Either way, please…

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I’m starting this series with by far the most common issue raised, which could be paraphrased something like this:

“How can we help them get their ideas onto the page? They often have great ideas when you’re talking to them, or they’re talking to each other, but as soon as they have to write them… that’s when the problems start.”

Talk for Writing… Talk:Write… Storytelling Schools… The prevalence of these fantastic schemes (and they are fantastic, in many ways) seems to suggest it’s common sense for oracy to be the gateway to writing.

Yet what I picked up from the majority of schools I visited for this year’s World Book Day celebrations – and indeed what I tend to discover from most of my school visits period – is that many learners, from 5 to 18, still struggle to find the right words to place on the page. Why is that? And what can be done about it?

I’m not a scientist, so I can only guess at the why. Pretty much every other subject in school, certainly up to age 16, we teach learners to expect a ‘right answer’. By age 11, most English learners will know around 20,000 words, many of which are synonyms, and all of which can be combined in seemingly limitless ways.

The problem isn’t a lack of imagination. It’s having to choose the ‘right’ answer from infinity.

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I could be wrong about the cause, but my solution has been successful in literally all schools and/or tutoring assignments I’ve used it – and that is?

Help learners feel good about their choice of words before they approach the blank page.

As with my work on helping learners begin reading for pleasure, helping them “feel good” isn’t achieved by just telling them they should feel that way. They need to feel that pleasure for themselves, and then good writing will follow.

We learn to feel good about our choice of words when we see others enjoying them. There are several ways you can help learners to experience this, but here’s a simple activity that’s one of the quickest and the best.

I’ve run this activity with groups of all ages from 5 and up – and yup, that includes teachers, professional writers, sales teams, etc. It can work with any kind of content your learners have yet to write – for example, real-life stories, stories they’ve heard, stories they’ve made up, letters to send, etc – but crucially, the content must already be in creation.

That point bears emphasising: this is not an activity for creating a story, a report, letter content, etc. However you plan for them to get the content, do that first – be it using prompts, story maps, telling the story for them to retell, etc.

But before you give them their blank page, do this:

1. Sit your group in pairs. NB: If your group has an odd number, it’s better for them to pair with the facilitator than make a trio. (If you’re providing one-to-one tuition, pair up with your tutee.)
   
   Use whatever means you wish to decide who is ‘No.1’ and ‘No.2’ (my favourite is to say, “Whoever in your pair is sitting the closest to me, you are Number 1.”).
   

2. No.1 begins telling their story (or report, letter content, whatever) to their No.2, one sentence at a time.
   

3. At the end of each sentence, No.2 gets to say either “Yes” to show they liked the sentence, or “No, try again” if they didn’t.
   
   If they say “Yes,” No.1 moves onto the next sentence.
   
   If they say “No, try again,” No.1 must find a new sentence to share the same information.
   

4. Keep going for a set time (2–3min is usually enough), then swap roles.
   

5. If possible, after No.2 has been the orator, move the No.1s around so they each have a new partner, then repeat the process.
   
   If working in one-to-one tuition, after you’ve taken a turn as the orator, let your tutee have another go.
   

6. At the very end, ask your learners to raise their hand if they got further through their story the second time around. You don’t need to comment on the result, it’s just to satiate your interest – but you should find that, nearly every time, the majority put their hand up.

Note: It’s important to model this activity first, especially if you use a similar exercise for story creation, so you can emphasise that the information always stays the same – it’s only the words that change.

Here’s an example you can use to model, with a No.1 telling Cinderella to a No.2…

No.1: “There was once a poor orphan girl called Cinderella.”

No.2: “Yes.”

No.1: “Her mother dying was bad enough, but when her dad died she was left living with her stepmother and stepsisters.”

No.2: “Yes.”

No.1: “The stepsisters were probably the ugliest people alive.”

No.2: “No, try again…”

Now at this point, No.1 could not say something like, “Suddenly, an alien spaceship flew down and captured Cinderella, whisking her off to a strange and distant planet…” That would be a whole different story. No.1 has just said that the stepsisters were ugly, so they need to rephrase that sentence somehow – maybe…

No.1: “Cinderella’s stepsisters were so ugly, even their mirrors would turn around in disgust.”

No.2: “No, try again…”

That’s right: if No.2 still doesn’t like the sentence, they can repeat their “No, try again” – and No.1 has to try yet another variation – such as…

No.1: “The stepsisters looked like two dirty handkerchiefs had spent ten years festering at the bottom of a dog poo bin, before sprouting arms and legs and learning to speak.”

No.2: “Yes!”

…at which point No.1 can finally move to the next sentence.

What’s Going On?

Way more often than not, learners get further through their story with their second partner. Why? Because they’re naturally beginning to take note of what works to entertain the person in front of them.

In other words, they’re discovering that communication is a two-way street – the signals they detect from their audience can help them choose the best words to say.

And now they know what phrases work…

Give them that blank page! When you ask them now to write the best version of their story/report/etc, they’ll know exactly what to jot down. $;-)

I’d love to know how you get on with this activity! Or, if there’s another area of literacy your learners are struggling with, perhaps that could be a future topic for one of these posts? Either way, please…

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The following began as an extract from All the Better to Read You With, and was adapted into the article below first published in the Writing in Education magazine issue 91.

My vocation as an oral storyteller began almost exactly nine years before the publication of my first children’s book. Throughout that vocation, probably the most popular comment in the feedback from schools and event organizers was, and still is, “I can’t believe you had them sitting still for so long!”

Many storytellers are thought to possess this magical art of enchantment. It’s an art that I’ve seen produce feelings of fear and/or envy in children’s writers and educators alike: sit a group of youngsters in front of a professional storyteller, and they’ll be riveted within minutes – without a screen or even a page in sight, and whether they’re aged four, eight, or eighteen.

But as I approach the end of my second decade sharing stories with live audiences, and leading workshops for others to do the same, I’ve become convinced that the secret to the storyteller’s power to enthral can be found in a review I received from Primary Times during my stint at the Edinburgh Fringe:

“It felt more like a conversation than a performance.”

This feedback most neatly sums up the direction I give at the start every storytelling workshop: Tell with your audience, not to them. This isn’t just a key skill of good storytelling – it’s the keyring skill, the one from which all other key skills hang.

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It’s also the skill most undersung by those who see ‘storytelling’ as a synonym for ‘acting’ or ‘performing’, because, well… everyone can do it! Every time you share an event from your day with someone, hoping to help them understand your emotions and thought-processes… or share some gossip with another, hoping to provoke a reaction… That’s the essence of storytelling!

A performer knows they’ve done a good job when the audience has been focused on them, and they receive rapturous applause at the end.

A storyteller knows they’ve done a good job when they detect obvious signs that their audience has engaged with the experience – for instance, immediately asking questions about decisions taken by the characters, the truth of the events, where the story came from, etc. All this shows that the audience are considering what the story means for them.

Of course, a storyteller’s skillset often includes the ability to pull a story from their head to match the interests of their audience after just a short initial discussion, and will adjust the language they use to ensure they’re being understood as they go along. But when reading to students, whether the words were written by you or another, your content is proscribed.

Even so, you can still make use of that ‘keyring skill’ of good storytelling – which, adapted for the purposes of live readings, can be rephrased as follows:

Read with your listeners, not to them.

To help you do so, I’d like to share with you five key skills to ‘hang’ from your keyring, which you can think of as forming your storytelling ‘VOICE’…

There are NOW 4* ways to enjoy the rest of this article…

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2. The Most Complete: Buy the Handbook!
   If you’re anyone looking to really raise the next generation’s enthusiasm for reading, you’ll find way more than this article alone. Further tips, planned lessons, and even nine stories written especially for reading aloud. Pick your purchase point from Waterstones, Amazon, the publisher’s website, or your favourite bookshop.

3. If You’re a Writer in Education: Join the NAWE!
   If you plan to visit schools as an author and/or write advice for teachers, membership of the National Association of Writers in Education gives you a stamp of professional standing – as well as public liability insurance, cut-rate Enhanced DBS checks, and of course access to the magazine where you can read the rest of this article. Follow this link to learn more.

4. *As of 3 March ‘24: Fully free! For those who really can’t afford any other option at the mo’, a slightly more condensed (but still pretty complete) version of this article can now be found at Words & Pictures, the online magazine of the Society for Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. Follow this link to check it out. (NB: Sometimes the W&P website redirects all links to its homepage, so be prepared to search ‘oral storytelling for writers’.)

Read more

I recently had the enormous pleasure of joining the ginormously energising juggernaught of joy that is Jed Doherty for an episode of his Reading With Your Kids podcast, a show that is essential listening for anyone keen to support youngsters' futures by sharing the enriching pleasure of reading. $:-)

In this episode, you'll hear why 10-year-old Chip wouldn't've enjoyed my first book... but also how I've since drawn upon my experiences as both storyteller and writer to help parents and educators read more engagingly with young listeners.

Then of course, there're tips aplenty! Plus we discuss the trend for rewriting old fairy tales with 'happily ever middles' – and why that's not necessarily a useful thing to do...

Take a listen here:

I’d love to read your thoughts! Please hit the button below to…

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And while you wait for my reply, you should absolutely subscribe to Jed's podcast to enjoy many other authors sharing their love of creating for young audiences. You'll pick up many more tips for reading with your kids, I'm sure. $;-)

Search ‘reading with your kids podcast’ on your favourite podcast player, or hit the button below to visit their website.

Visit 'Reading With Your Kids'

I am so maHOOsively excited – the mahoosivest I’ve ever been – to share this book with you! It truly is the summation of my life’s work to date – what Ian Whybrow (of Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs fame) beautifully and accurately summed up as, “A fresh, accessible guide to using storytelling to encourage young people to read for the joy of it.”

He also added, “Should be part of every teacher’s toolkit.” $;-)

All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure is unlike any other educator handbook out there. So far, all handbooks, textbooks, and reading schemes for the UK National Curriculum’s ‘Reading for Pleasure’ requirement have been essentially comprehension schemes in disguise. Yes, talking about a text is one way to get young readers thinking about what they’ve read – but it’s not necessarily going to get them enjoying what they’ve read.

ABRYW is different. For starters, two chapters in and you have proof of the benefits of reading for pleasure. Not a series of quotes or charts – actual evidence of your own experience.

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In the middle section, there’s guidance on Reading Like a Storyteller. As you’ll hear me say all around this Substack and elsewhere (such as my podcast recording with the National Centre for Writing), storytelling is not the same as acting. This book will help you utilise the “storyteller’s magic” for yourself. A teacher from County Durham got to enjoy an advance copy, and sent in a review saying,

I absolutely LOVE THIS BOOK! I have applied some of the techniques to see much greater engagement in other subjects too, such as history. As I said at the beginning, I LOVE IT!

And another from Hampshire said,

Thanks to this book, reading for pleasure in my class is higher than before. I’ve been teaching for 34 years, but this book got me to look at reading differently and make it more meaningful. Rather than racing through to hear everyone read, I now engage the children in conversations as we go along. The advice on that area alone has proved invaluable.

But the core of the book is the selection of nine short stories and fourteen lesson plans proven to help reluctant readers discover the joys of becoming recreational readers…

And with the artwork of Winnie the Witch’s Korky Paul gracing the cover, you can feel confident opening it up for shared reading in front of any number of learners.

All the stories and lessons have been tested and perfected across over a decade of storytelling, so I have first-hand experience of their effectiveness – as have the other contributors to the book, which includes leading Cambridge teacher trainer Rebekah Owen, my original storytelling partner in crime (and now awesome children’s author) Amy Scott Robinson, and none other than Talk:Write founder Ros Wilson.

But you needn’t take our word for it. Here’s the full quote from teacher Toria Bono, of the Tiny Voice Talks podcast, used for the title of this post:

This is an engaging book that helps educators understand how to use storytelling in the classroom to develop our children’s joy of reading. The stories, lessons, and skills provide us with a way to ’teach’ reading for pleasure that works.

Here’s another from a headteacher in Cambridgeshire…

There’s a great deal to love about this book! It demystifies everything about encouraging reading for pleasure, and makes it all appear within reach.

…and here’s yet another from a deputy head up in Manchester…

I tried a couple of these lessons with my Year 1 and 2 children, and they are now well and truly addicted! Thank you for this book!

Then there’s my favourite, from another teacher in Hampshire:

This book has been a lifesaver!

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Let’s Party!

The Bett Show is the UK’s largest trade fair for educators interested in education technology. And as their Head of Content, Emma Vandore, rightly said when she signed me up to deliver a presentation during the event, “Books were the first ever ‘EdTech’.”

To celebrate the arrival of the book on bookshelves in stores, schools, and homeschooling households, I’ll be happily sharing tips in casual conversations with educators throughout the event. If you’re an educator, ping me a message and head to the Bett Café!

But at 5:15pm Wednesday, the fun really starts. There’ll be a 30min presentation sharing my tippity-toppest tips for beginning to cultivate a ‘Reading for Pleasure Mindset’ among your learners, followed by an active demonstration of a free resource we’ll be giving away to everyone who shows up – something to lead a hugely inspiring conversation with your learners.

Oh…

…and there’ll be CAKE! $:-D

Don’t worry if you can’t make it, though. Just make sure you’re following the publisher Epic Tales on Facebook and/or Instagram using the handle EpicTalesST. Then you’ll get to watch it streamed, live or on catch up. $;-)

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Got the book? Met me at Bett? Watched the livestream? I’d love to share a chat about your thoughts! Please hit the button below to…

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The list of benefits from reading for pleasure seems to grow every year. In 2013, the UCL Institute of Education revealed that learners who read for pleasure outperform their peers across all subjects, including Maths, regardless of their family’s socio-economic background.

And recently, Dr Michael Mosley (of ITV’s Secrets of Your Big Shop) released a podcast via the BBC sharing how science has uncovered reading’s overwhelmingly positive impact on mental health, physical health, and even lifespan. Listen to that here:

So if your school held an award proving its commitment to nurturing the love of reading among learners, surely it would be one of your proudest accolades?

The Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group is a branch of the Society of Authors, and they offer exactly that: an accredited signpost that your school is truly committed to equipping your learners with this invaluable mindset.

And it’s available to both primary and secondary schools.

So what are you waiting for?

How do I get the Award?

1: Create the Right Environment

It all starts by providing your learners with an environment that stimulates and supports recreational reading. For tips on creating such an environment…

…but for now, here are some basics to get you started:

• Let your learners vote on the ‘class read’, so they’re all invested in your shared reading.

• Before any questions on comprehension, ask your learners what they’re enjoying about the story so far.

• Let your learners get creative with how they respond to those questions on their enjoyment – and display the results.

• Create Reading Spaces around the school, full of a wide variety of books and a selection of comfy cushions for your learners to relax into reading.

• Rather than making ‘Reading for Pleasure’ time a quiet 15min, provide it as an opportunity for your learners to rave to each other about the books they’re enjoying.

• Perhaps most important of all: Keep the School Library for reading ONLY! Staff meetings and/or lessons that don’t involve reading are FORBIDDEN…!

For an entire lesson scheme proven to raise recreational reading around your school, including a selection of enthralling short stories to get you started, I highly recommend ordering a copy of All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure.

2: Invite an Author to Your School

The next vital step is to bring an author or illustrator into your school – because only they can nominate your school for the award.

If you already know someone, great! Ask them to come in and speak with your learners about their enjoyment of stories.

Have someone in mind? Check out their website or social media; most will be delighted to receive your invitation and discuss your options.

The Society of Authors has its own directory of members, which can be a great starting point – but note that many authors will need to be booked via an agent or publisher. It’s also worth noting that not all members of the Society are on this list, as it’s something that authors register for separately (at the time of writing, I’m guilty of not getting round to adding myself yet…).

Probably the most popular agency for schools to find authors and illustrators available for bookings is Authors Aloud UK – for example, this is the only way to invite Korky Paul into your school.

And of course, I’d happily visit your school! You can connect with me by replying to this post, finding me on social media, or contacting one of my publishers, Epic Tales.

Important: Ask your author/illustrator about the Reading For Pleasure Awards towards the end of the day. Earlier than that, and your visitor may be put off by the sense that you have an agenda. Wow them first, then enquire if they know about the Awards…

Of course, if you’ve done a good job, your visitor may mention them to you first – but please don’t be disheartened if they don’t, or even if they aren’t aware of them. Bear in mind that the Awards are still fairly new, and your visitor will likely need to be a member of the Society of Authors to know about them.

For that same reason, though, don’t be afraid to bring up the topic – and maybe point your visitor to this article so they can start their research.

Bonus Tip: DON’T TRY TO MAKE YOUR VISIT COINCIDE WITH WORLD BOOK DAY! That’s the most popular week for author/illustrator/storyteller visits, and my diary for that week is typically booked a whole year in advance. Plus it might make more of an impression to show that you value reading the whole year round…

And that’s it!

Once you’ve done all the above, it’s time to wait and see if the author/illustrator puts you forward. $;-)

If you’ve done a good job but don’t hear anything, it might be because the author/illustrator is busy. Don’t be afraid to follow up with a thank you message for their visit, and ask for their feedback on your school. That should prompt them to remember your conversation about the Awards…

There’s no limit on the number of schools who can receive an Award…

BUT there is a limit on how many schools a single author/illustrator can nominate!

We can only put forward three schools a year – so get booking your visitor(s) ASAP! (NB: This is another good reason not to aim for World Book Day – authors, illustrators, and storytellers visit so many schools in that week, they can all blend into one…)

To find out more, visit the Awards website here – and don’t forget to…

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Please forward this support to a colleague – they may use it as much, or more, than you.

You’ll then feel the intense satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped even more children reap the rewards of recreational reading. $;-)

Got a question or comment about any of the above?

Please get in touch – I’m here to support you. $:-)

Here are just some of the items we discuss…

• The differences between storytelling, acting, and writing.

• The importance of considering your audience when storytelling or writing.

• How storytelling shatters barriers.

• How the way you tell a story is often more important than the content of the story.

• How the love of story can empower struggling readers to overcome physical challenges to reading.

…along with some of my favourite examples from my own storytelling career – including how a fart signalled that I had perfected my craft!

Listen below – or, better still, subscribe to the NCW podcast “The Writing Life” using your favourite podcast player. $:-)

And once you’ve listened, please…

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…I’d love to chat about your thoughts!

Please forward this support to a colleague – they may use it as much, or more, than you.

You’ll then feel the intense satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped even more children reap the rewards of recreational reading. $;-)

Got a question or comment about any of the above?

Please get in touch – I’m here to support you. $:-)