Creating a Reading Environment using Aidan Chambers advice
So much of what is now taken for granted as good practice among Reading for Pleasure enthusiasts was first articulated by Aidan Chambers. His books on encouraging a culture of reading drew on a lifetime of wisdom and his ideas are just as relevant today as when they were first published in the early nineties. More details of this remarkable life and career are available here. One year on from his death, Anne Bradley honours his legacy in this short blog for National Share-a-Story month.
Creating a Reading Environment
The Reading Environment by Aidan Chambers (2011: Thimble Press) has valuable advice for those of us who read books with children. He writes about how to create a positive environment in which children of all ages can enjoy reading and develop to become readers for pleasure. In this short blog I will aim to highlight his key points.
Selection:
Make books available to children. You can store books in boxes and on child height shelving at home. Display books so that children can see their covers. Change your displays but also keep firm favourites readily available. Take children to libraries where they can handle books and make choices. Children’s bookshops are also designed to enable children to select. Browsing is a key factor in the reading process and sometimes can’t be hurried!
Encourage:
Reading is a wonderful skill and children can be praised and encouraged for looking at books and in turn reading them. It is lovely for children to choose a book they want to read or have read to them.
Time:
Allocate time to read. This can be time you share books with children and time for they to explore and read on their own. As children grow, they develop their own reading habits and stamina.
Response:
Talk about reading with children. Encourage them to tell you about their reading. Ask them questions about the stories. Ask them about feelings too. Why did you like this book? What made you laugh? Which character do you like best? Encourage children to talk to each other about their reading. Peer recommendation is a very powerful incentive and comparing ideas enables children to comprehend what the have read. Response to reading can be enjoyable, reflective and social.
You as the enabling adult:
Read aloud to all children, not just the very young. This helps children to experience how writing works and provides them with a safe way to experience books that perhaps they cannot read themselves. Through listening to a well-read text, they can experience the excitement, drama and power of stories. Let children see the text, whether they are sitting with you or holding their own copy. Choose your texts carefully and make sure you are familiar with them. By introducing children to a variety of texts you are stimulating their own ability to choose what they want to read.
When reading children are using and developing very complex features of cognition. They are interpreting text visually, processing sounds and making sense of the meaning. The more exposure a child has to reading will lead to a wonderfully extended vocabulary, understanding of sentence structure and their own creation of memories and imaginative experiences.
The Reading Environment provides excellent advice for teachers and those who work with readers. Aiden Chambers presents ideas to develop and organise displays, activities, plan author visits all guaranteed to enhance children’s reading for pleasure. His companion book Tell Me discusses the importance of children talking about their reading and suggests a wealth of ideas to enable this to happen.
If you are interested in exploring this area in greater depth three very useful books are:
Mallet Margaret (2019) Choosing and Using Fiction and Non-Fiction 3-11 Routledge (pub)
Gamble Nikki (2019) Exploring Children’s Literature Sage (pub)
Hahn Daniel and Flynn Leonie(ed) (2010) The Ultimate Teen Book Guide A & C Black (pub)
