A Reading CommunityThe basis for successful teaching of literature is the same, whether the group is a
primary-school class or an undergraduate seminar. The students need to become a
community of readers, and the experienced teacher will probably plan to establish such
a community in the early weeks of a class’s life together.
The aim is to create a context in which stories, picture books, novels and poetry are
regularly and unselfconsciously talked about, celebrated or criticised, both in and out of
normal class time. Teachers have learned many strategies towards that end; although
the one unalterable prerequisite is not a strategy at all, but the commitment of the
teacher to literature. Enthusiasm for stories, novels and poems is not readily simulated,
and in the best literature classrooms, many of the most effective moments of teaching
take place in spontaneous conversations between teachers and individual children.
Resources, inevitably, are crucial. In 1931, The Board of Education’s Report on the
Primary School insisted that every class should have its own library, stocked with a
variety of books (‘mainly story books, but they should be widely chosen. Care should be
taken not to press upon children books of a kind not likely to be attractive.’) There were
to be books for oral reading; individual, group and class study; and silent reading for
enjoyment, along with a range of information books. Literature teachers in both primary
and secondary schools would still argue that a class library is essential—or at least
portable book boxes or mobile trolleys, and display stands. Especially in primary
schools, teachers try to establish a comfortable, often half-enclosed, corner where
children can retreat at odd moments in the day. This will also be the space where stories
are told and read aloud. Beyond the classroom, in fortunate schools, there will be a well-
stocked school library, where students are made welcome. It is now rare to find such
libraries in Britain staffed by a teacher librarian.
The Report’s recognition of the importance of silent reading was far-sighted. Many
schools at both primary and secondary levels try to maintain a daily (or at least a
regular) period of silent reading. The practice is known by a variety of acronyms, from
USSR (Uninterrupted, Sustained, Silent, Reading) to DEAR (Drop Everything And Read);
the widespread experience is that the teacher must be seen to be a reader by the
children during these sessions (rather than a marker, a compiler of assessment forms or
a patrolling guard). Another support to individual reading can be the provision of tapes
and headsets; professionally made tapes are available but, notably in the case of poems
which have become popular in a particular class, tapes made by the teacher or a
‘special guest reader’ are often invaluable in creating a class’s positive view of itself as a
community of readers. In an overcrowded curriculum, a teacher’s belief in silent reading
time has to be strong if it is to be preserved.
Teachers also excite interest in books through ensuring that students frequently talk
about their individual reading with them and with other students. Book
recommendation sessions are conducted, sometimes as a class, sometimes in small
groups; older readers may engage in more developed ‘book exchanges’, in which they
talk about a book and give prepared readings of a couple of pages or a poem. Often,
their comments are based on entries made in their ‘reading journals’, in which students
record their questions and comments on books as they journey through them. Other
students discuss common texts, from picture books to classics, in small groups with or
590 TEACHING FICTION AND POETRY