Rowsley Reading Challenge

Our Reading Challenge has been custom made to suit the needs and requests from our pupils. Following a pupil forum on our previous scheme the children mentioned some very important factors that limited their reading for pleasure:

• they didn't feel their reading was valued
• the books were limited to each year group and not ability
• the genres were not exciting or varied enough
• completing a comprehension and book cover every time was not enjoyable and put them off

I then went on to discuss how we could improve it and make reading great again. The children gave me the idea that instead of limiting the genres could they have a challenge where they had lots of different genres and a wider range of books. One child said, "We could go on a walk, like Dorothy down the yellow brick road, completing different book challenges." That was when I had the idea to produce challenges through different literary worlds. 

Another area, that was discussed later with staff, was the limitation of the previous scheme. It was completed in year groups but sometimes we had children who struggled so they became demoralised and we had children who exceeded and felt left behind. Our new scheme targets each child as an individual reader. The books on offer are fun and enjoyable and we celebrate their reading by displaying the book based tasks in our classrooms, by discussing our books and by reciting our poems. 

The challenges were created by all staff and we implemented the scheme in Autumn Term 2021, a further pupil voice was held in Summer Term 2022 to ascertain whether we have achieved what we set out to achieve - to inspire a love of reading and make reading great again. 

The challenges include reading books based around the current class topic, pupil choice, graphic novels, multi-cultural and topical issues, poetry, picture books, novels, non-fiction, and courageous advocates - both literary advocates and real life advocates. The children then need to complete a challenge based on their book. Class teachers discuss the texts read with the children and will make suggestions and recommendations based on the individual. We are encouraging our children to make recommendations to each other too. 

The Texts Chosen

We have used the Pie Corbett Reading Spine and included his recommendations at all stages but have also added other up to date texts. Every month sees the arrival of a plethora of new and exciting texts so we do not limit ourselves and regularly add to the challenges.