Value and Relevance of the Project

Writing in ‘Reading: the next steps’, Nick Gibb (2015) argued that reading is a fundamental part of achieving good qualifications and succeeding at school. Reading is a major part of a child’s school experience as it is heavily included in the curriculum and essential part to all subjects (GOV, 2014).

Through the emails and meetings we had with Isaac Haskell it was clear to see that the library was important in supporting reading at St Mary’s Catholic School. They value the Key Stage Two (KS2) at St Mary’s as they schedule half an hour each week, make it available during break time and encourage the children to go before and after school. Each class teacher would pick children who have behaved that morning to go to the library that break time, this showed us that the visiting the library was seen as a reward. It was therefore, a priority for us to create a display and continue to maintain an environment that the pupils’ would enjoy.

Part of the project is raising the achievement of boys in reading. Our mission was to improve the library and encourage the interest of male pupils’ in the hope that their improved interest in the library would aid and support the development of their reading. The deputy head explained to us that it was clear using their formative assessment that girls were achieving better than boys in literacy and reading. To improve their standards and male pupils’ achievement in reading was of great relevance for St Mary’s Catholic School.

Moss and Washbrook (2016 p.4) highlighted that the gender gap of boys and girls and reading is a national problem. They argue that the way to close the gap is ‘high quality preschool provision and high quality home learning’ can reduce the risk of boys achieving below the expected standard for both language and literacy. However, within our project we could not use these approaches as we only had access to the school environment.

In 2016 Save the Children produced a document ‘The Lost Boys Report’ which explains the current gender gap, what was causing it and what could be done to narrow and hopefully remove the current gap. There report supported Moss and Washbrook’s research of addressing the gap within the early years setting and the family and community settings. They believe that improving the qualification of professionals will improve the standards of early year’s childcare and quality in preventing boys not being interesting in reading and raise their achievement. This report helped us in understanding the issue and relevance of the gender gap within education today however, it did not address what can be done in primary schools.

Gary Wilson (2016) stated that a strategy that school could use is partnership reading. His theory is that partnership reading of older male pupils and younger male pupils improve achievement and helps in closing the gender gap. The strategy provides boys with a focus to their reading and motivates them to read as they have the opportunity to lead. The project main objective is that the older boys are challenging the existing stereotypes that ‘boys can’t read’ or ‘reading isn’t cool’ as they look up to older children naturally and therefore, their reading partner is a great role model for them to then be encouraged to read.

Based on this research we aim to incorporate peer reading into our sessions. One session we will write or select stories with a KS2 class that they can then in the second session read to their partner.