A Helping Hand with your Literacy Year by Literacy Hive

We always love working with partners around reading and encouraging a love of books. Literacy Hive has written a blog that just may help parents, teachers and librarians to make the most of every day!

A Helping Hand with your Literacy Year

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the long-term benefits of being a keen reader in childhood, the statistics around children’s engagement with reading are not encouraging. Across the board, the numbers show a marked decline – from the number of under-5s who are read to regularly to the number of primary-aged children who say they enjoy reading in their free time. With ever increasing competition from social media and screen-based entertainment (the latest Ofcom report highlights that over 25% of children aged 5-7 now own a smart phone) the work of Federation book groups has never been more important. However, it’s no small task to put together a year-round programme of events and activities that will promote parental engagement, empower young readers and establish supportive local reading networks – that’s where The Literacy Year calendar comes in.

Packed with celebration days, award shadowing schemes, reading challenges and writing competitions, The Literacy Year provides a month-by-month guide to the opportunities available to help you engage young readers and writers. Each calendar entry includes links to relevant booklists, online author events and supporting resources from a range of different providers so that you can take advantage of everything that the wider world of books and reading has to offer. And because The Literacy Year is an online calendar, it can be easily updated as new resources become available, ensuring that you always have the latest information at your fingertips.

The Literacy Year calendar is one of the most popular features of Literacy Hive, a free-to-access literacy resource signposting website created to help teachers and librarians find resources to support all aspects of their literacy curriculum quickly and easily. Literacy Hive is all about making connections, about ensuring that everyone can take advantage of the wider support available to promote books and reading. Because it is only by working together and using all the resources available that we will be able to reverse the current downward trends and ensure that every child enjoys the many benefits that reading for pleasure brings.