Today I’m doing an INSET session at Tonbridge School on the power of reading for pleasure. (Actually AT, after real trains and everything! And lunch!) This was meant to happen last year but then along came you know what and I’m so glad the school kept the faith and have booked me to visit. Having said that, I should warn you that I’ll be doing very few in-person events for the foreseeable future as being self-employed and unsalaried means that the risk of travelling is that I catch Covid and then have to cancel other work. I can’t afford the risk.
Tonbridge School already has a strong, formal reading policy and part of that is a commitment “To continue to engage and inform staff” and to that end “relevant professional development should be provided at appropriate times.” Hence, my visit.
Below are links to some of the things I’ll refer to in the session. And the Powerpoint itself.
Resources for you
The bundle of handouts is ReadingBrainHandouts – HERE.
I’ve sent the school a lot of other handouts that you might like as teachers, pastoral staff and senior management – ask Jonathon Blake!
The Reading Agency Literature Review of 2015, providing evidence of the various benefits that come from regular reading for pleasure is HERE.
I demolish the flakey research that people take to mean that only fiction boosts empathy HERE and HERE.
The image illustrating in numbers the difference between a young child reading for 20 minutes a day and five minutes a day. If they don’t enjoy it, they’ll be doing the five minutes, not 20. (Source acc to the image is Nagy and Herman but I don’t know where I got this.)
My Readaxation postcard:
You might like to use this – I’ll be bringing physical copies with me, too:
The Powerpoint for your use is below. It takes a lot of space on my website so I won’t leave it here forever; I suggest you click on the link to Slideshare below it and download from there. Obviously, it’s for your own use only. (Copyright protected.) And it won’t make much sense if you didn’t hear my words explaining everything!