While Guided Reading is an excellent opportunity to develop comprehension skills, insight and understanding, it is important for students to also have opportunities to read in which they have greater choice in respect to the text. Reading for Pleasure encourages reading as a habit and life-long skill. In order for this to develop students must be intrinsically motivated to read – that is the desire to read comes from them personally rather than being asked to read a text for a specific reason and being reward / punished for doing or not doing so.
Reading for Pleasure not only revises strategies developed during Guided Reading but also develops skills relevant to other aspects of English. When students read regularly, they develop their vocabulary by learning new words, they gain an instinctual grasp of grammar and sentence structure by observing these in accurate writing, their spelling improves by repetitively seeing words spelt correctly and their punctuation becomes even more accurate and varied through observing punctuation marks used in other people’s sentences.
Students should Read for Pleasure regularly, in the evenings, at weekends, in the library at breaktimes or lunchtimes, perhaps before they go to bed at night, on the bus and/or in the car on the way to school. There are many opportunities for such reading that are enjoyable and not intrusive. Students should consider selections from the following as good choices for texts. Surfing the internet has not been included due to the possible reliance of such reading on sound, moving images and pictures.
Novels
by famous writers like JK Rowling, Roald Dahl, Philip Pullman, Stephanie Meyer or by less well known authors writing in genres or about subject matter of interest)
Collections of short stories
Non-Fiction Books
like Horrid Histories or factual books on subject matter of interest)
Collections of Poetry
Modern Plays
Newspapers (Tabloid, Broadsheet or local)
Magazines (on subject matter of interest)
