Check out the summer reading challenge and get your kids reading now!

The Summer Reading Challenge is a really cool project which aims to get schools, libraries and parents working together so our children might actually do some reading they like this summer!

For an English teacher like me, this is the Holy Grail: if one of my pupils actually enjoys reading, then everything else follows; happiness at school, success in the classroom, and, even if takes time, good exam results. The Summer Reading Challenge website is brilliant because it enables parents, teachers and anyone interested to find librarians who can come into schools or community centres and help get children reading. Most importantly, it’s all about enjoyment and finding books that children like — because they are out there! Good librarians know how to get even the most reluctant readers digging books.

This info from the website: “The national Summer Reading Challenge, coordinated by The Reading Agency, is run in 97% of UK public libraries. With 760,000 children aged 4-11 taking part, the Summer Reading Challenge is the biggest national reading initiative. It runs in libraries throughout the summer holidays, with incentives, activities and events designed to create a real buzz around children’s reading. The challenge is simple – to read six or more library books over the summer.”

Check it out now!

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Published by: @wonderfrancis

Francis Gilbert is a Lecturer in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London, teaching on the PGCE Secondary English programme. He also teaches the Creative Writing module on the MA in Children’s Literature, which is run by Maggie Pitfield and Professor Michael Rosen. Previously, he worked for a quarter of a century in various English state schools teaching English and Media Studies to 11-18 year olds. He has, at times, moonlighted as a journalist, novelist and social commentator. He is the author of ‘Teacher On The Run’, ‘Yob Nation’, ‘Parent Power’, ‘Working The System -- How To Get The Very Best State Education for Your Child’, and a novel about school, ‘The Last Day Of Term’. His first book, ‘I'm A Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here’ was a big hit, becoming a bestseller and being serialised on Radio 4. In his role as an English teacher, he has taught many classic texts over the years and has developed a great many resources to assist readers with understanding, appreciating and responding to them both analytically and creatively. This led him to set up his own small publishing company FGI Publishing (fgipublishing.com) which has published his study guides as well as a number of books by other authors, including Roger Titcombe’s ‘Learning Matters’ and anthology of creative writing 'The Gold Room'. He is the co-founder, with Melissa Benn and Fiona Millar, of The Local Schools Network, www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk, a blog that celebrates non-selective state schools, and has his own website, www.francisgilbert.co.uk. He has appeared numerous times on radio and TV, including Newsnight, the Today Programme, Woman’s Hour and the Russell Brand Show. In June 2015, he was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing and Education by Goldsmiths.

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