Getting Children Reading

Anyone who knows me, knows just how much I enjoy reading. What you may not know is that I also spend a lot of my time encouraging children to read.

My own children have always had books all around them, on bookshelves upstairs, bookshelves downstairs, a kids book box in the living room and they both have bookshelves and magazine/ comic racks in their rooms. We have story times not just at bedtimes, but sometimes during that 5-10 mins after dinner when we are still sitting at the table. So, reading in our house is not something we do as homework or just so that we can make a note in the children's reading diaries so we don't get nagged at parents' evening; it's something we do for fun and relaxation.


I was delighted recently, after spending weeks gently nagging a year 6 girl I am working with, when she came in one week telling me what she had read. Now she is reading regularly and is seeing how enjoyable it can be. Sometimes that's all it takes. It's not always that easy, though, and I am always looking out for new ways to encourage children (or encourage parents to encourage children) to get into a book!

With this in mind, I just found out about this great website and thought I would share it. Go and have a look at oxford owl.co.uk.

There is advice on how to get children reading and information about the skills they need to develop and how you can help.

There are lots of great ideas for fun games to play that will help with reading and language skills in general and it links to other good quality websites like BBC Bitesize.

Many children are already familiar with the Oxford Reading Tree Characters, Biff, Chip and Kipper etc. and they do feature on this site. 

You can even link to a PDF document which shows you the full range of the books,and if your child is doing the Read Write Inc (Ruth Miskin) Phonics Scheme, there is a link to the home reading books available to support that too.

But it is not solely for young children; there are things for slightly older children too (up to Year 3 and maybe struggling Year 4 readers). 

Particularly good is the link to this Oxford webpage about Project X, a project specifically aimed at boys to raise their achievement.

And if that hasn't got you interested enough, just go to have a look at the animated owl. He's cool...