How to create a school-wide reading culture
Creating a reading culture requires commitment and collaboration between all members of the school community. Reading for pleasure is a key part of this culture. Read how to build the network of support your students need to become engaged readers.
A school-wide reading culture
A school with a reading culture fosters positive attitudes towards reading.
It's a place where school leaders prioritise developing the skill and the will to read among students of all ages. They encourage staff to collaborate and weave reading for pleasure into every class.
It's a place where all members of the school community value, celebrate, encourage and promote reading.
A reading culture provides children and young people with:
support and encouragement
role models
resources and opportunities to read for pleasure.
What's needed
To create a reading culture, the principal and staff need:
to understand the impact of reading on student achievement
a shared vision of the school's reading culture
to know why a reading culture is important
to know what an engaged reader looks like
to fully support the library and its resources, services and programmes
to regularly share, celebrate and promote reading with whānau and the community.
Creating a reading team that includes literacy leads, library staff, students and other champions of reading helps build and ensure a sustainable reading culture.
Reading for pleasure is a key part
Research shows that reading for pleasure should be part of a school-wide reading culture. Reading for pleasure develops literacy skills, educational achievement and wellbeing. It's also included in educational policies and guidelines.
New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) notes that reading for pleasure at home and at school was one of the critical factors for a successful pathway into adulthood.
Reading for pleasure — a door to success
Watch the video: Creating a school-wide reading culture
In this video, staff and students from Auckland's Mahurangi College and Kingsford Primary School share insights on reading for pleasure, how it links to literacy and what they do to get everyone in the school reading.
Transcript — Creating a school reading community
Visual
Female teacher walking across school ground opening door for secondary students who file into class.
Teacher distributes book The Pōrangi Boy to students.
Teachers speaking in the classroom or library.
Audio
[Music]
Lerena Glucina, Teacher, Mount Albert Grammar: Hey good morning. Lockie, here's your book. Reading for pleasure in this instance with this class that's all there is.
Barbara Cavanagh, Principal Huntly College: It's got to be a whole school thing around reading and really making sure that every teacher feels that they're a reader as well.
Visual
Title: Creating a School Reading community, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa | National Library of New Zealand, Communities of Readers.
Young children and teachers/librarians in classroom and library looking at books.
Elizabeth Jones, Michaela Pinkerton, or Barbara Cavanagh, with books on shelving in the school library in the background. Clips also show book displays.
Audio
[Music]
Elizabeth Jones, Director Literacy and Learning, National Library of New Zealand | Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa: If we think about how do you create a reading community, in some ways access to books is obvious and thinking about choice and quality and relevance and responsiveness to needs and all of those things. That is necessary it is absolutely not sufficient. The other things that are critical are the developing of role models and champions within communities.
[Music]
Michaela Pinkerton, Deputy Principal, Huntly College: For me, the important factors of a reading community is a huge element of choice, excitement, fun, availability of text, range of text, that there is time made to do reading together, that young people are having kind of agency over what they're choosing to read and take part in. But it's also reading alongside.
Barbara Cavanagh If I was talking to another school about wanting to start a reading culture. I think it's from the leadership down that you start those conversations. We started a bit of a mantra that Huntly College is the school for leaders, as it absolutely is. But then we've always said this little bit and, by the way, leaders are readers. And it's just little things like that to start with and it's like ‘Oh what’ you know and then making a real commitment to having a library that looks like it's alive.
Elizabeth Jones: One of the things we're always interested in is if you go into a school and a school was really thriving as a reading community, what would you see and what would you hear, and what would you feel in that school? How would that underpinning of ‘we value reading and it's for everyone and that means from the principal to the teachers to every student here’, what kind of environment and practices and culture would we see?
Visual
Lerena Glucina reading to students in the classroom, then speaking to the camera in the classroom.
Audio
Lerena Glucina: ‘He nods his head at me. All good neph? My koro …’
Every day, every class reads, whether or not there's an assessment looming or it doesn't matter, there's just reading done. So that's quite good. And they're used to it and they come and they settle. So that’s really nice to see that kind of shift in attitude. It's like it used to be, ‘Ugh are we reading today?'. And now it's like, ‘Are we reading today?’. And it's so cute, it's so cute, it's cool, it's really heartening to see.
Visual
West Harbour School gate, teacher reading to children sitting on the mat, children listening, Heather Howe speaking to the camera in the school library.
Clips of Te Manawa library and children reading in the library.
Audio
Heather Howe, Associate Principal, West Harbour School: I think some of the factors that influence engagement of reading within the school, the teachers, I think, play a major part in that. Just how enthusiastic they are about reading within their own rooms. I think for things like using our library, whether the children are left to just pick a book or whether there's actually some talk about books from the teachers, maybe some reading to the children so they see that it's something that it's not just something they have to do to learn, it's actually something that they can do to get pleasure.
Male teacher reading to class: As he spoke, he waved his hands over his head like a boxer. 'So that's how you did it,' said Mum.
Heather Howe: So in school, for the students and teachers to access books, we do have the school library. We also have the National Library who provide us with books if we want those for the children. All children have library cards which, of course, then they can use to go up to Te Manawa and use the main library there as well.
[Music]
Visual
Older students in the library, reading and working on the computer.
Mikaela Pinkerton or Kate-Rose Janmaat speaking to the camera in the school library.
Audio
Michaela Pinkerton: Another thing that we've been able to leverage hugely is the availability of resources to borrow through the National Library. So our librarian often is making requests for collections that we can bring in, students can have access to, and then we can return again. So that's ongoing and that's, again, hugely enhances the work that we have here and the resourcing that we have here. But it’s the people, it's people and relationship every time.
Kate-Rose Janmaat, student, Huntly: We also have reading largely incorporated in Puna Ako in the morning, which is basically like our form or whānau time. And that's where we can either read as a whole class or we get read to, which is something I think is really cool because I've noticed with other students that they're starting to enjoy reading or they're reading things that they didn't know about. And a lot of students have talked to me about things that they have actually gotten out of reading, which I think is another neat thing about that.
Visual
Heather Howe talking to the camera in the school library.
Crissi Blair talking to the camera at the National Library Auckland centre.
Kate-Rose Janmaat or Michaela Pinkerton speaking to the camera in the school library.
Clips of students hanging out in the school library.
Audio
Heather Howe: Beginning of each year, at about week five or six of the year, we have what we call Have a Go Harbour, and we have community providers come in. So we have the health sector come in and do blood tests for the parents and diabetes checks. We have, Te Manawa comes down and runs, has a display and offers library cards for the families that don't have them. And a lot of other community engagement. So we look at women's health and men's health and that's usually really well accepted by the families, we get a lot of families through.
Crissi Blair, Facilitator National Capability, Services to Schools, National Library of New Zealand | Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa: I love the idea that we can welcome the whānau of our children into the school library as well when we have events. My school used to have a picnic at the beginning of every year. And I always made sure that I was there for the picnic so we could have the library open. And a lot of the children would bring their families up to have a look at the library. The younger siblings would come in and they would be going ‘Oh I'm coming here one day and I'll be able to get books out of this library’ because it was a big, beautiful library and we were well resourced.
Kate-Rose Janmaat: The library also has become quite a large space for people to hang out, it's quite common to come in here at lunchtime and it's loud and buzzing and people are on the computers or reading books or talking and it's become quite a happy environment to be around. And Whaea Michaela has been really good at promoting it, we have reading competitions, writing competitions to try and get those fun aspects within the students around those types of things.
Michaela Pinkerton: You know, all of those things we value are enhanced by the opportunities that we can see through reading. So if reading is the one thing that makes a really huge difference despite all your contexts that might be quite hard, might be quite negative, then we absolutely need to be investing in that further.
[Music]
Visual
Repeat slide of video title: Creating a School Reading community, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa | National Library of New Zealand, Communities of Readers.
4 male students and Kate-Rose Janmaat speaking individually to the camera in the school library or classroom.
Audio
Younger male secondary school student 1: I used to enjoy reading a lot of, like, fantasy books or sort of just books about dragons and stuff. Now I kind of enjoy more like scientific books about really facts and learning new things.
Older male secondary school student: What do I like reading? What do I not like reading? I mean I like to have a taste of a little bit of everything eh. I like me a little romance. I'm a romantic sap I'll be honest.
Kate-Rose Janmaat: I'm currently reading a book at the moment called If I Stay. And I was actually introduced to that book through a class with Whaea Barbara in the morning where all the year 13s were required to take something out and read and I thought that was pretty neat because I saw people reading that don't usually have a book in their hand.
Younger male secondary school student 2: I like reading books about like stuff like magic and sci-fi but like living skeletons and stuff like that that you know’s not real but it's cool to immerse yourself in imagination like that.
Younger male secondary school student 1: You should read. It's good for you.
Visual
Slide with Communities of Readers logo.
Slide with Te Puna Foundation logo and words 'Supported by Te Puna Foundation'.
This transcription
If you find any errors with this transcription, email digital-services@dia.govt.nz.
Create a reading culture in your school
Use our school culture review tools
Use one of our School Reading Culture Review tools to review your school's current reading for pleasure practice — your areas of strength and areas you'd like to develop and enhance. Use the tool at the start of the term or year, and again later in the year to help measure your journey.
School reading culture review tools
Ensure all teachers are reading role models
To create a reading culture in a secondary school, it's important to ensure all teachers across the curriculum, not just English teachers, are reading role models who:
read
read aloud
chat about books and reading with their students.
Make your reading culture visible
When you walk around your school and visit your school website, what impression do you get of your school’s character?
Is it proud of its sporting triumphs with a display case of trophies, does it celebrate taha Māori, or is the emphasis on art, the environment, religion?
What about reading? Does anything indicate that reading is also valued at your school? For example, are there:
displays and books in or around school offices and foyers
signs pointing to the library
tips about reading at home in newsletters
staff or student book recommendations visible.
People and places around the school should be used to support a school-wide reading culture.
Make the school library the heart
What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.
— Harold Howe, a former United States commissioner of education
School librarians and principals can help instil a reading culture in a school by ensuring the library is:
well-resourced, well-staffed and well-used — a vital catalyst for the reading culture of your school
included in visitors’ tours of the school
used for events
included in teachers’ lunchtime duty rosters.
It is also important that:
teachers collaborate with the librarians and use the library as an essential resource for their literacy programmes and initiatives
the library's environment, resources and services display evidence of library staff encouraging students' development as readers.
Librarians' role in creating readers
Watch the video: School libraries: The heart of a reading culture at Hurupaki School
The video illustrates the school library's pivotal role in creating a reading culture and supporting reading engagement throughout the school.
Transcript — School libraries: The heart of a reading culture at Hurupaki School
Speakers
Jose Herman
Rachel Rahui
Margaret Holmes
Discussion
Jose Herman: What we're trying to do here at Hurupaki school is promote a culture of reading throughout our school using our library as a base.
Rachel Rahui: We're really lucky at Hurupaki because the principal and the staff the principal and the staff are so enthusiastic about reading.
They're really committed and supportive of the library.
Margaret Holmes: I believe that we have a very strong reading culture at Hurupaki school
and I believe that the library is central to this.
We have statistics, our annual statistics to show that our children are higher achievers
in reading. This includes our Māori and Pasifika children.
In fact, we go against the national trend in that we have no tail in that area.
Jose Herman: The collaboration with other teachers is generally at syndicate meetings staff meetings and PD days where we set major topics for the year for the school.
Rachel Rahui: When we're looking at what books teachers are wanting for the library or if they're requesting we talk with them and we find out what they need.
We also use the National Library site which has awesome resources.
We try to show the teachers all our new books at staff meetings in the morning over a cup of tea.
And we have too, when we've received a grant for a big number of books, set them all out on the tables in the library and we've had a morning tea in here and shown the teachers our new books.
Margaret Holmes: I think the success of our library is something that promotes reading culture is having somebody to drive it.
There's got to be a leader. Initially it was me because I'm a trained teacher librarian, I have a passion for this type of learning when I became principal here I realised I couldn't run it myself so I was really lucky to have the fabulous Jose and Rachel to take over.
Rachel Rahui: When I first started it was two books a limit and that's all children could get out.
We want the books out not sitting on the shelves so we've raised our level, which is awesome because the kids can then take something for reading that the teacher has helped them pick a quick reader or something, but they can also go into non-fiction and pick something because they want to look at it so that's been a really big thing for us increasing our loan limit and next year I hope to increase it even more to make it for the seniors they can take out lots more books.
Margaret Holmes: We do know that it has terrific impact on children's reading, their ability to read and it's also about attitudes to learning it's not a linear process they don't have to just read the book that the teacher gives them in their classroom that day they can be self selecting they can come in here, they can choose to read or not to read.
They don't have to read a particular level they don't have to read a particular text, they don't have to do what they don't want to they might just use this as the social hub, but they get drawn in to the things that are going on.
Rachel Rahui: The blog I started this year, we've got an Oliver home page because we're on Oliver and I update the homepage every week with what' happening I always promote a good book on there and a website that I think the kids will enjoy.
Now we're using it to put our author of the week on and things like that as well. The kids are looking there for information. That's been really good fun.
Jose Herman: We know we're on the right track in our library because Monday morning first thing I have kids coming up to me saying you know, what's the quizz about this week, and they're coming in here looking for things to do, they're looking for the latest books that we've been promoting.
We're trying to promote it as a real learning centre and centre where everything in the school sort of happens.
Rachel Rahui: Our library's open every day all day. We timetable library slots for teachers to bring their classes in during the day and while they're in the library they run the library
library.
We've got a booklet on the issues desk, which helps them issuing, returning or looking for books all the information they need is there. I'm here in the afternoons and I help them too.
But during lunchtime the library is run by our wonderful student librarians. We train them and they love being in the library. We set them special little tasks to do.
Each group every day has a different little task from running the library quizz to presenting the winner of the library quizz at assembly so it's always busy, there's always things happening and the kids love coming in at lunchtime it's a social place for them as well
So it's lots of fun.
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