A few years ago the assumption was that children who lacked cultural capital largely came from disadvantaged backgrounds.
But the reality is that our busy, tech-infused lives mean that many families now, regardless of income, struggle to accumulate the cultural capital we would have taken for granted only a generation ago.
Thanks to the distraction of digital devices and the demands of modern life, the time families spend talking with one another, building up children’s language and literary skills by discussing their day, let alone a book, has been drastically curtailed.
Fostering a love of reading
Given these social and technological headwinds, teachers have a battle to equip children with the kinds of skills necessary for reading comprehension. A lot of energy, rightly, goes into the mechanistic element of reading when children first start school, and by and large it is done well and efficiently.
But how do we get them to a greater depth of understanding so that they’re able to deduce, to infer, to explore character development or imagine what might happen next in a plot?
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It can be done, but teaching comprehension and inculcating a love of reading depends on a combination of direction and flexibility. It means guidance but also an awareness that we have to work with the environment that children are growing up in today rather than relying on the prescriptions that were common when we were young.
First, it’s essential for schools to provide a structured system of reading that scaffolds children’s development but that doesn’t allow them to “comfort read”.
Children will tend to keep reading books they know and words they’re familiar with unless they’re induced to read something they find a little bit more challenging. It can’t contain too much unfamiliar vocabulary, or they will become flummoxed and disheartened. But it has to contain enough new words and concepts to stretch them and help them to develop comprehension skills.
The importance of trust
Alongside that managed, structured reading, however, we also have to give children a certain amount of choice. Allow them, within reason, to read the books they’re interested in and that are appropriate for their ability. If we are serious about engendering a love of reading, we have to trust children and give them access to books that they find relevant and engaging.
And in my experience what they often find most interesting are non-fiction books. Whether it’s dinosaurs or Florence Nightingale or volcanoes - the children in my school tend to gravitate to non-fiction books, initially at least. Once they have mastered the habit of sustained reading, they find it easier to engage with a fictional text.
This means schools should have as wide a range of well-catalogued reading stock as possible in these cash-strapped times, ideally in both hard copy and virtual formats, so children can engage with texts at home or anywhere else.
Reading aloud is rightly seen as a key component of a school’s reading strategy. We can’t expect children to know what good reading is unless teachers model it. But the efficacy of tried-and-tested techniques shouldn’t blind us to the possibilities of new ones.
Recently I used an AI chatbot to write, within seconds, a comic story about a policeman who had large feet that were facing the wrong way and who’d worn his hat for so long his head had become helmet-shaped. The children thought it was hilarious, and we used it to discuss genre, structure and plot, what was probable or improbable, funny or downright weird. It became a creative starting point rather than a (lazy) final destination.
Schools are extremely good at creating and sustaining routines and structures that develop habitual behaviours, which clearly has value when trying to promote a culture of reading. But they aren’t so comfortable or accustomed to being non-directive. And if we really want to develop comprehension, address a deficit in cultural capital and allow children to grow into enthusiastic readers, we have to give them space. Space to explore, space to ponder, space to feel that they have a choice and agency.
It means talking to them about their interests, nudging them to make connections to related topics and getting them to articulate what they find exciting. It’s essentially about drawing them gently into conversations about what they are reading in an unpressured, discursive way, rather than interrogating them for answers and giving the impression that we’re teaching them to read primarily so they can pass a test at the end of key stage 2.
Ultimately, the best way to embed a love of reading in a child is helping them to come to appreciate that they’re reading for themselves and not for us.
Richard Slade is executive headteacher of Plumcroft Primary School in Greenwich, London
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