The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research

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Model how a skilled reader draws on the range of comprehension strategies required to make meaning from a text rather than focussing on one domain in isolation. Comprehension is an outcome, not a skill to practise, and so it does not make sense to divide up the elements of skilled reading and teach them separately. Like a well-curated book shop, create an inviting book corner with front-facing books to support browsing; familiar books which invite re-reading and revisiting, favoured by the children or recently read aloud in class; books that invite wider reading across forms, authors, poets and illustrators, topics or themes. Questioning is most effective when it is text specific and builds on rich discussion which encourages children to offer personal response and build on prior knowledge to make new connections and construct a mental model so that they understand a text’s meaning. Do you remember feeling so invested in the story or what you were learning that you would keep reading even when you needed to use the bathroom or were hungry?

Higher literacy skills are associated with a range of positive societal benefits, including having a stronger sense of belonging to society and being more likely to trust others. 22 Please note Power of Reading in the Early Years is now known as Closing the Vocabulary Gap in the Early Years This is at the heart of our charitable work and you can see what this looks like in any one of our Associate Member Schools. It is truly inspiring. When you read, not only will your comprehension skills go up, but so will your writing ability. Exposure to great pieces of literature has an effect on your writing abilities beyond just vocabulary words. Phrases and sentence structures that you were previously unfamiliar with become second nature. Do all staff have expertise in knowing and understanding the continuum of development for reading and the processes that underpin reading?Demonstrate what skilled readers do to make meaning from a text so that children can practise this for themselves in shared reading, in revisiting the same book or other familiar books they have heard read aloud, and in re-reading their decodable books or carefully selected independent reading books several times. Daily story time is recommended across all Key Stages, in which the class can simply enjoy a book together without interruption or analysis.

So, the next time you're feeling stressed, remember the benefits of reading for pleasure and let the tension melt away. 9. Improve Your Mental Health If teaching specific comprehension strategies explicitly – as part of a time-limited intervention to support early readers in Upper Key Stage 2 – also plan to model how these are used by skilled readers all the time. Another one of the benefits of reading books is that they can improve our ability to empathize with others. And empathy has many benefits – it can reduce stress , improve our relationships, and inform our moral compasses. CLPE’s Corebook s recommendations are constantly updated by our librarian and book selection panel. These helpful booklists are a fantastic starting point around which to have these discussions and to develop knowledge of quality children’s literature within teaching teams.Ensure you have read and selected the books in your classroom book corner and that these allow all your children to see themselves in what they read as well as books which offer perspectives from beyond children’s own lives or contexts. In another study , researchers measured how reading a novel affects our brains. The study's participants read the novel "Pompeii" by Robert Harris, and as tension in the story developed, more areas of the brain were activated.