Introducing the Wide Reading Program to Students

Last week I posted about the structure of the Wide Reading Program I’ve been trialling for the past few years. This week I thought might be useful to give a bit more detail about how I introduce the program to students.

Activity 1: Brainstorm and Discuss the Benefits of Reading

As we all know, if we simply tell a teenager to do something they’re probably not going to follow our instructions. I’m therefore a big believer in trying to get our students to understand the reasons why we learn certain things, and this is where I start with the Wide Reading Program. In previous years I’ve relied on a class brainstorm and discussion of the benefits of reading for pleasure, but this year I rejigged things to include a Canva presentation which sets things out for my students more explicitly.

This year I found that during the brainstorm and discussion most students were able to easily identify the literacy benefits to reading for pleasure while some said it helped them to learn about things or to relax or escape from their problems. However, I found that very few students recognised the wellbeing benefits. In particular I focus on the idea of reading as developing our ability to empathise with others, since this is inherently relevant to the teen experience. Hopefully seeing the visual in the presentation helped them to recognise the multitude of ways reading can help them in their everyday lives.

My reading lessons are only an hour long, and this year due to the excellent discussion sparked by the Canva visual I found that I didn’t really get to the second and third discussion points regarding why they read or don’t read and what behaviours they count as reading – these ended up being incorporated into subsequent lessons. Next year I’ll likely remove them completely from the lesson to streamline my teaching activities.

Activity 2: Reader Identity Survey

Instead, my priority was to get students to complete the reading habits survey so I could get a better understanding of who they are as readers and how I can best support their reading journey. The first two questions in this survey are based around their reader identity and confidence:

  1. I think I am:
    • A confident reader
    • An OK reader
    • Not a very confident reader
  2. I am:
    • Someone who loves reading
    • Someone who will read if there’s nothing else to do
    • Someone who doesn’t like reading

I’ve previously examined their this year’s results, with most students identifying themselves as OK readers who aren’t that enthusiastic about doing it for fun which is consistent with the research in this area. However, after attending a recent webinar by ALIA on Fostering a Passion for Reading, next year I’ll reword the second question to something like “I really don’t like reading but wish I was better at it” to promote a growth rather than fixed mindset.

The second part of the survey asks students about their reading preferences:

However, this is an indecipherable wall of text for struggling readers and rather difficult to navigate on the devices we used. This screenshot is only capturing half of the options I’ve given them! Next year I’ll therefore either simplify this or remove it; I did actually remove it for our streamed Literacy class and found it worked much better. I originally included it with the intention of using it to find specific books for each student but due to time restraints I haven’t had the opportunity to do this yet and doubt I will find the time in future years.

The third section of the survey is a bit more open-ended and could easily replace this second section to help me get a better idea of who my readers are. It features 3 questions:

  1. What was the last book you remember reading? What did you think of it?
  2. What was the best book you have ever read? Why?
  3. What is your reading goal for 2024? e.g. would you like to read a certain number of books, a certain style of books, books from a specific author or culture etc.?

In future I’d love to work with the classroom teacher to nominate three students each per term to target based on these goals. While this won’t allow us to reach everyone in the class, it will allow us to focus on the kids who might otherwise slip through the cracks.

So there you have it – my first lesson in the Wide Reading Program. If anyone has suggestions on how else I can improve or activities that have worked for you, please leave a comment below! If you’re enjoying these activities, stay tuned for more in coming weeks.

Wide Reading Program: Mission Statement and Guiding Questions

One of the difficulties I’ve found in transitioning from a classroom teacher to the teacher-librarian role is the lack of clarity around our role and what we actually teach. As an English and History teacher I always had a syllabus with specific outcomes to guide my teaching programs, and moving into the TL role felt a little bit like I was lost at sea without a map. While the Information Fluency Framework released recently by the NSW Department of Education provides some structure to our role as information specialists, there isn’t a similar local guideline for our roles promoting reading for pleasure.

To help guide my programming for the Wide Reading Program I’ve been trialling over the past few years, I created a mission statement and a series of inquiry questions. These are still very much in the draft stage but have been useful in directing my teaching and learning activities and helping me focus on specific aspects of developing a positive pleasure reading experience for my students. Ideally each term would focus on a separate concept with a different guiding question each fortnight but, due to the number of interruptions we experience each year, this has yet to be the case.

Mission Statement

This program aims to create a school-wide culture of pleasure reading. Reading for pleasure has repeatedly been shown to improve student literacies and socio-emotional development. Student reading drops off during adolescence for a number of reasons, including lack of access to quality texts, lack of positive reading role-models, lack of time, and lack of confidence in their reading ability. This program aims to address these issues by providing students access to appropriate, self-selected texts and by setting aside a 60 minute period each fortnight to allow students time to explore, share, and value their reading in a socially supported positive learning environment. Through this program we aim to create independent, lifelong readers who are set up for personal and academic success.

Guiding Concepts and Questions

Term 1 Focus Concept: Introduction to the Library and Reading Behaviours

  • How can the library help you achieve your personal best?
  • Why do we read? What are the benefits?
  • Who counts as a reader?
  • What behaviours count as reading?
  • What positive and negative experiences have we had as readers?

Term 2 Focus Concept: Reader Identity

  • What sort of reader am I?
  • What rights do I have as a reader?
  • What barriers prevent us from reading for pleasure?
  • How can we overcome these barriers?
  • How can reading shape our sense of self?

Term 3 Focus Concept: Social Reading and Building a Reading Community

  • How do we find the right book?
  • How does social media influence what we read?
  • How can reading be a social activity?
  • What benefits can reading have on our sense of connection with others?
  • How can we share our reading experiences with others?

Term 4 Focus Concept: Building Reading Stamina and Motivation

  • How can we get the most out of our reading experiences?
  • How can we build our stamina as readers?
  • What motivates us to read and keep reading?
  • How we achieve our personal best through reading?

Over the coming weeks I’ll try to post some activities that have worked for my classes, so stay tuned for more detail about how these guiding questions translate to actual teaching and learning activities!