"When children and young people enjoy reading, they read more often, helping to build vital reading skills and bringing wider benefits for wellbeing, confidence and learning"
National Literacy Trust
We believe reading for pleasure can transform a child’s future and impact their achievements across all subjects. This classroom resource, created jointly by the National Literacy Trust and the British Council, is full of exciting activities to inspire your pupils and ignite a lifelong love of reading.
The activities are based around four themes:
- sharing reading spaces
- reading aloud
- our culture and community
- establishing an international book club.
What do we mean by reading for pleasure?
The National Literacy Trust defines reading for pleasure as:
‘Reading that we do of our own free will, anticipating the satisfaction that we will get from the act of reading. It also refers to reading that, having begun at someone else’s request, we continue, because we are interested in it. It typically involves materials that reflect our own choice, at a time and place that suits us.’
Reading for pleasure can take place in school and in free time. Crucially, it is when children are reading because they want to read.
Collaborating and sharing
These activities are designed for you to work together with a school abroad, offering a unique opportunity to collaborate with teachers and pupils from another country. Together, you can foster a love of reading, celebrate diverse literature, and engage reluctant readers.
To ensure accessibility, we’ve created these activities to suit different internet connectivity levels. Most can be shared via email, WhatsApp, or traditional mail if needed. However, using a shared online platform like Padlet can add an extra dimension to your collaboration.
While these activities are ideal for partnership projects, they are also flexible enough to serve as stand-alone classroom activities, allowing you to adapt them to your own teaching context.
