Reading for learning

Reading for learning is a different skill from reading for pleasure.

Think about what you read in a week. How much of it is non-fiction? I’d guess most of it: the news headlines, a report from your line manager, the weather forecast, a literacy survey.

Maybe you are lucky enough to get half an hour to read that new novel in bed, but realistically most of us do a lot more non-fiction reading every day. Our National Literacy Trust survey of teachers found that nearly 70% of surveyed teachers read for information, 77% read for work and only 39% read for enjoyment every day.

Secondary age pupils read a lot for pleasure outside school, and this is increasingly likely to be online or on electronic devices, as 98% of pupils in Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 have access to the internet at home. Websites, social media and emails feature strongly in our annual literacy survey of pupils aged 8 to 18. Outside class, reading fiction remains much more popular than non-fiction and young people also read for enjoyment more frequently than they read for information outside school.

Our literacy survey also suggests that young people below the expected attainment level are less likely to be reading non-fiction or newspapers in their own time, yet in school most subjects require close, critical or reflective reading of non-fiction texts. Many subjects expect learners to carry their own research at home and most teachers will be familiar with receiving homework that has been cut and pasted from Wikipedia. Why does this happen?

Many pupils do not know how to read for information effectively or how to summarise and take notes from a longer text. Reading for learning is a different skill from reading for pleasure. It needs to be taught in school, especially to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds or minority ethnic groups whose parents may not have had the educational or cultural experiences to enable them to help.

Above all, young people need to be equipped with the tools to continue reading beyond GCSE. They are likely to be in education for many more years and will be required to read more complex non-fiction, information texts as they develop subject specific interests and move into the world of work. We owe it to them to teach them how to read history books, scientific articles, photography manuals, websites, the rules of cricket and all the multiple genres of academic and everyday life.

A version of this article first appeared in Teach Secondary, written by our Secondary Schools Adviser Catharine Driver.


Originally published at www.literacytrust.org.uk.

National Literacy Trust

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We are an independent charity dedicated to raising literacy levels in the UK.

National Literacy Trust

Stories, thoughts and opinions from the team at the National Literacy Trust.

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