Reading Together® programme
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The Reading Together® programme helps parents and whānau support their children’s reading more effectively at home. The National Library can provide extra books, and professional advice and support to help the programme succeed in your school.
How the Reading Together® programme works
The Reading Together® Te Pānui Ngātahi programme aims to teach parents and whānau how to read to, and talk with, their children in ways that build a love of reading and a foundation in language and literacy. Caregivers learn simple strategies for making reading enjoyable rather than stressful.
Research shows the programme has a positive impact on children’s reading achievement and relationships between children, parents, whānau, teachers, and librarians.
Reading Together® — information and research from the Biddulph Group who developed the programmes.
Reading Together® programmes — information on the Te Kete Ipurangi (TKI) website.
Reading Together® taught me how to find out my child's level and strengths. It has helped with improved reading, understanding my daughter's ability and allowed me to step back and to rethink. It was an awesome course. You can't build a wall without the brick, but sometimes you can forget the cement!
— Parent from Matamata Christian School, 2020
Videos and exemplars about Reading Together®
Short videos provide examples of how Reading Together® Te Pānui Ngātahi has been implemented in different school and community settings including schools, marae and churches.
They show how Reading Together® can:
build trust
enhance relationships
support children by supporting parents
increase access to reading
counter harm.
Watch the videos with examples — on the Reading Together® website.
Read exemplars with evidence resources — on the Education Counts website.
How National Library can support you
The National Library’s initiative supports parents and schools in the most effective way possible. Our parents were delighted to choose extra books to take home after each meeting and were most appreciative of this new strand of support.
— St Joseph’s School Ōtāhuhu
We can provide books
Schools can request a Reading Together® programme loan to support the programme in their school. This loan is separate and additional to any other school loans you may have from us through our lending service. The programme loans are free, with no charge for overdue or lost books. These loans are issued for one term.
Phone 0800 LIB LINE (0800 542 5463) to request a loan. You'll need to tell us:
how many families and children are participating
the year levels of the children
their reading ages
if the families have any particular interests.
More about our school lending service
We can offer professional advice and support
Contact our Capability Facilitators on 0800 LIB LINE (0800 542 5463) if you would like advice about supporting the Reading Together® programme in your school.
Our facilitators can also:
show how the school library can help develop a reading culture in your school community
help you create a welcoming, family-friendly library environment for parents and whānau, for example through displays and increasing library opening hours
help you develop your library collection to meet the needs of your target students
Resources and support on our website
A school-wide reading culture — ideas and a reading culture review tool to help your school build the network of support students need to become engaged readers.
Reading at home — encouragement and guidance for families about creating readers at home. Download the brochure Help your child become a reader, available in English, te reo Māori, Cook Islands Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Niuean, Tokelauan, Arabic, Hindi, and simplified Chinese.
Reading aloud — tips for reading aloud, one of the most effective ways of nurturing a love of stories and reading. Download the brochure Read aloud, available in English, te reo Māori, Tokelauan, Cook Islands Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Niuean, Arabic, Hindi and simplified Chinese.
Home-school reading partnerships
Reading Together® in your school and community
Reading Together® works alongside other literacy programmes, such as summer reading, to support students. Collaboration between the library team, school leaders, teachers, family/whānau, and local public library staff helps create and reinforce a reading culture within your school and the wider community.
Your school library supporting Reading Together®
A library should be like a pair of open arms.
— Roger Rosenblatt
Your library, along with the public library and the National Library, form a triangle of reading support for students and their families.
If you are planning to hold Reading Together® workshops in your school library, you might like to arrange for parents to borrow books for themselves and preschoolers before or after the workshops. You could also liaise with kōhanga reo and early childhood centres to make it easier for families or whānau to access books they need.
In this brief video, School Librarian Liz Christensen from Ohaeawai School describes the integral role the school library plays in delivering the Reading Together® programme at their school.
Transcript — Reading Together at Ohaeawai School
Liz Christensen: We've been really pleased to be a part of the Reading Together® programme.
It's been very, very successful in this school. Right from the beginning, the library was the main focus of the whole programme.
All the meetings were in the library, and I was a key part of delivering information and helping parents choose books.
I gave many talks on how to choose an appropriate book for their children and different fonts and font sizes, interesting covers, and hooking children into series, and being quite specific about their own children.
It's been great having whānau in the school.
And I've opened up borrowing to family units so the kids and the parents have barcodes and I've opened up the library as well.
So from 8 o'clock in the morning until — we normally close at 2:30, the school finishes at 2:30 — but I have the library open till 3:00 for parents to call in with their children and choose books together.
And it's lovely, it's just lovely, they've really … it has made a huge difference to the children, having the parents involved. And it's made a huge difference to the parents, knowing how to approach books and what books to choose. I think a lot of parents just were a little out of their depth.
So we've opened it up, not only to the parents, but we're looking at the local play centre and opening it up to the wider community and then getting parents in before their children even start schools.
Collaborating with the public library
It’s a good idea to liaise with your local library to arrange a visit and library borrowing cards for your Reading Together® participants.
If the Reading Together® workshops are being held at the public library, your school library can support participating families by:
showing parents how to help students choose books for reading for pleasure
opening the school library and arranging library cards for families
ensuring your library is a welcoming place — particularly important for family members who aren't familiar with libraries.
