Encouraging Reading with No Books at Home?

Can Reading for Pleasure really be “the single biggest factor” to children’s future success if their family can’t afford books?

A little while back, one of my favourite BBC podcasts, More or Less, explored the claim that “reading for pleasure is the biggest factor in future success.” More or Less has a reputation for thoroughly disproving false statistics in the headlines – so naturally I was a little nervous about them tackling this one…

Image courtesy of the BBC

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.