While I was completing my Master of Education degree at CSU, I came across some fascinating research about the social elements of reading. This is often seen as a solitary past-time and therefore might be a turn-off for some teenagers, who are going through a development phase of seeking social interactions and determining their identities in these social settings. At the time I started to muse about incorporating more social reading activities it into my Wide Reading Program, but alas! Time was my enemy. While we’re still not exactly on the best terms, I do have a little more of it up my sleeve at the moment and therefore I’m revisiting the idea of leveraging research into social behaviours in this year’s program.
I’m lucky to have the Tech Elect class joining us again. I had them last year when they were in Year 7, and while many students enjoyed the program and found it beneficial, I’m still concerned by the number who did not enjoy the program or who reported a decline in their enjoyment of reading.
This class is a BYOD iPad class and therefore the perfect guinea pigs to trial using technology to boost the social aspect of reading for pleasure. I’ve found that my own reading habits have been positively influenced by social media such as Bookstagram, while Booktok has had an undeniable effect on the reading landscape in the past few years.
This year, I’m hoping to start incorporating these elements by getting students to create a Goodreads account and to use the Goodreads app on their devices. One of my uni lecturers, Krystal Gagen-Spriggs, has worked in this space and written a fascinating article on how she used Goodreads in her own Teacher-Librarian programs.
This will by no means be an easy feat but it is one that I definitely feel has the potential to transform my students’ perceptions of reading behaviours and hopefully will increase their enjoyment of reading for fun.