ANY QUESTIONS?

2. Vivienne Smith works at the University of Strathclyde in the Department of Education. She is interested in literacy, and how the messages we give children about reading from the very beginning influence the way they develop as readers. • If we get early reading right, there will be more children who are prepared to read and do well in school. All sorts of wonderful things happen if you read. Your vocabulary increases; your ability to use language increase; your range of ideas increases; your general knowledge increases – all of that is important.

3. Another thing that reading will do for you, though, is not just increase your ability to learn but also it can increase your mental wellbeing. One of the things we all know reading does for us is gives us a space away from the real world, and that’s important.

4. Children who are experiencing stress, for whatever reason, can use reading as that breakout space. The mini-break where they don’t have to worry about whatever it is that’s worrying them. If you think of a fairy tale where magic might happen, or a wicked witch might appear, or a giant, or a wicked stepmother. The child who reads those knows that that isn’t real. But it gives them another way of looking at life. And if you can say, ‘okay, that world is not quite like my world’, you can then say, ‘what if my world was different?’ So reading is presenting an alternative way of seeing reality, a suggestion that there might be other ways of doing things.

12. ANY QUESTIONS? ahanif@wyndcliffe.bham.sch.uk Miss Ameena Hanif KS2 English Lead