This publication was built on the experiences of a group of teachers who deliberately re-shaped their practice in order to observe gender differences around reading and to support boys’ progress. Boys and Reading is the outcome of a working party that met at CLPE over a period of a year to discuss issues around boys’ underachievement and present observations from classrooms. The working group then set out to document and analyse successful approaches in classes ranging from Nursery to Year 6.

Some of the main themes emerging from this action research are:
• How peer pressures that operate against boys communicating their feelings can also inhibit discussions about reading.
• How teachers and children together can develop ways of “getting inside” a text through private reading journals, small reading groups and wider literature circles.
• How dramatic and imaginative play encourages literacy development. As one teacher put it, “A lot of reading is about pretending”.
• How teachers can challenge some boys’ attitudes to books and reading by modelling affective responses to texts and creating opportunities for boys to communicate.
• How general school policies such as creating a reading climate, reading policies and parents’ evening can contribute to effective teaching, and how schools can scrutinise their range of resources. One teacher noted, “As a school we have looked at the kinds of books that we were buying and found they were mainly books that were liked by teachers rather than by children”.

Teachers agree that reading in school should be an “active” social business: group readings, performance readings and drama around texts are all literacy activities that engaged boys in this project.

Boys and Reading publication

 

 

 

 

 

  

Power of Reading Project