October RfP Conference – Tickets available

Book your tickets for the next OU/ UKLA RfP conference, ‘Reading Teachers: More Than Teachers Who Read’, on Saturday 1 October 9.30am – 4.00pm at The Open University in Milton Keynes (£35-40). We’ll focus on the impact of Reading Teachers and how to develop your practice, with workshops, bookshops and keynotes, including one from award-winning author Katya Balen. Don’t miss out!

Proud Partners of the Spark! School Book Awards

We are delighted to partner with the Spark! School Book Awards this year, where the winners are decided by children from a shortlist chosen by teachers, booksellers and librarians. Teresa Cremin, Professor at The Open University, says “We are immensely proud to partner with this worthy charity and support them to reach even more children.” Find out more about the Spark! School Book Awards.

Reinvigorate Reading for Pleasure

For those that attended, we hope you enjoyed this webinar where we shared top tips for creating a reading for pleasure culture in your school. You can also catch up with the on demand webinar recording here. If you want to deepen your understanding of RfP and nurture a love of reading in the children and young people you work with, then consider joining the Teachers' Reading Challenge which will run until 29 October.

New ‘Reading Teachers’ RfP book

Edited by Teresa Cremin, Helen Hendry, Lucy Rodriguez Leon and Natalia Kucirkova of The Open University, this book Reading Teachers: Nurturing Reading for Pleasure, draws on research and engaging case studies from 24 teachers to bring principled practice to life. We can’t wait to celebrate its publication at our Reading Teachers conference on 1 October!

Book Giveaway!

To celebrate International Literacy Day, which was held on 8 September, we launched a giveaway competition for this fabulous bunch of books! One of our lucky new newsletter subscribers will be selected as the winner by 30 September. We’ll be in touch to find out which nominated school they would like us to send this amazing bundle of books to!

National Poetry Day - 6 October

On 6 October it’s National Poetry Day! The OU RfP website has lots of great examples of practice to inspire you. Why not set yourself the challenge to prioritise poetry and see the impact it has, as Rebecca Douglas did for Mortimer Primary School in this ‘Prioritising Poetry’ example.

Planning your Literacy Year

Take advantage of all that the world of books and reading has to offer this year with Literacy Hive’s online Literacy Year Calendar. Packed with events, book awards, festivals and competitions, it’s free and each calendar entry comes with links to supporting resources. See what’s coming up in the months ahead to help you develop a culture of RfP in your school.

YLG Conference 2022, ‘Reading the Planet’

The Youth Libraries Group is in Sheffield 16 – 18 September for Reading the Planet: Libraries in a Changing Climate conference. Young people’s activism around the environment, climate change and more generally on societal change, gives us all hope for the future. Find out more about this live Reading the Planet conference (with virtual places available), focusing on the future of libraries and publishing.

Author in the Spotlight: Petr Horácek

Petr Horácek graduated as a Master of Fine Art in 1994. The first books ‘Strawberries are Red’ and ‘What is Black and White?’ were published in 2001 and he received the Books For Children Newcomer Award in the same year. Since then, Petr has written and illustrated many books for children and won awards for his books in Britain, USA and Holland. His new book, 'The Perfect Present' was published on 25th August 2022.

We are very excited to be welcoming 43 new schools to the Reading Schools Programme for 2022 – 2023. English subject leaders will join us in the next two weeks to begin their journey by exploring the issues in RfP and establishing a baseline for their school.

Keep an eye on this section of the newsletter for regular updates as these schools embark on this RfP whole school development programme.

Best Book Forward: CPD for Teacher Reading Group Leaders – 17 September

All of our fabulous TRG leaders will now have received an email from us, inviting them to the virtual TRG leader CPD session on Saturday 17 September 10.30am – 12.00pm. We hope you’ll all join us to hear about the latest books, to network and gain support for your autumn term meetings.

Glasgow Teacher Reading Group

The new Glasgow TRG launched this month. We welcomed about 20 members and everyone was enthralled as Maisie Chan started the session by reading an excerpt of, "Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu". Our session finished with new members sharing their favourite books. We are all looking forward to getting started and sharing meaningful and enriching conversations on fostering reading for pleasure.

Nurturing Reading for Pleasure

This was a highly commended entry in the 2020 RfP Awards by Phoebe Lawton from The Wilmslow Academy in Cheshire. She was moved by the statement that “reading for pleasure is a social justice issue and children have the right to access a rich and varied diet of literature”, so she began reflecting on what it means to be a reader and took actions to align her practice accordingly.

Shelfies: Sharing ourselves as readers

Rebekah Denby at Cherry Hinton primary school in Cambridgeshire, was inspired by the Teachers as Readers research and an article by Teresa Cremin titled ‘How to Become a Reading Role Model in Primary School’. Rebekah began to share some of her favourite texts and discussions developed around children’s own unique reading identities.