Encouraging reading

Introduction

Encouraging reading is a general introduction to some important aspects of how children develop their literacy and reading skills. In particular, it aims to raise your awareness of some of the main issues in how children learn to read and how you as a teaching assistant can encourage children to enjoy reading and improve their literacy skills.

We all want children to enjoy reading and many of us can remember a favourite book from our own childhood. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study reported by BBC News in 2011 made the bold statement that ‘Children whose parents frequently read with them in their first year of school are showing the benefit when they are 15’ (OECD, 2011). Early support means that children remain ahead in reading and that there is a strong link between the reading skills of young people and early parental help.

It is not only parents who can offer this early vital support, but also teachers, teaching assistants and the range of other learning support workers. Often, teaching assistants working in a one-to-one relationship with a child are in a much stronger position to read with them or listen to their reading.

This section consists of three topics:

  1. Babies and the early years
  2. Moving from the early years to primary
  3. Boys, girls and reading.

They cover the different stages of child development and some of the ways you can encourage reading and literacy in each of these stages, from the early years to young people in secondary schools

Learning outcomes