Reading for Pleasure in Year 7: Activity Booklet

Perfect as a transition unit to get your new students ready for English Literature studies or simply as homework or cover work to support your existing literature classes.

Absolutely fantastic! ...

...Provides you with a really useful, project-based piece of work which will undoubtedly engage pupils in reading for pleasure.

K Chanter, HoD & Peer Reviewer

This booklet is designed to help students to widen their reading and to explore the books they love to read in creative ways. Simple activities that build in difficulty to get students reading, discussing, writing, thinking and engaging with books, their characters, events, genres, writers and much more!

What do teachers say about this resource? (5693)

This resource was absolutely fantastic! It's always so hard to think of valuable homeworks to set for KS3... this provides you with a really useful, project-based piece of work which will undoubtedly engage pupils in reading for pleasure. The activities are meaningful, engaging and open to all abilities.... I like the questions, they are staged according to ability and they are very much tailored to students questioning themselves and therefore learning independantly. What I really liked was the fact that none of the questions were too difficult, it would be perfectly possible to set this a homework task and for students to cope with it alone... It gives you something purposeful to mark... the layout was great... it interprets the national curriculum strands very well. Having the APP AFs in there means that you can slot it into your curriculum plan very easily.

K Chanter, HoD & Peer Reviewer

Includes a good range of tasks which will engage a variety of students... clear and ready to use instantly. It is flexible... useful to any English department and school library... I like how the teacher notes have considered what equipment is required for tasks as well as what AFs are met in each task... encourages the students to read not only whole texts but extracts too. Many students find reading a whole text quite daunting and this resource encourages them at all levels. The phrasing used is also very positive, which will motivate students... It’s a good resource to get students talking about different texts. It could also encourage students to talk about texts they are reading with parents/guardians... There is a good mix of reading, writing and S&L tasks which will keep students interested. There are also independent, paired and group tasks which will allow them to share their opinions and findings. Overall it has a good focus on the KS3 curriculum.

K Greaves, English Teacher & Peer Review

The premise of having a resource on ‘Reading for Pleasure’ is fantastic, and some of the elements of this resource are fantastic. I like the way that opportunities for peer assessment are embedded throughout.

L Deighton, HoD & Peer Reviewer

I love the CLEAR links to AFs, this is brilliantly helpful and is a great way of encouraging students to engage with the curriculum. The layout is really clear and very easy to follow for staff, students and parents... There are some really lovely tasks set out which will aid independent learning and as well as a love of learning. There is also such a diverse mix of tasks that everyone will find a few things that they enjoy... the activities have been designed to spark students' interest and get them thinking about novels in a completely different way.

M Haslett, Head of KS3 & Peer Reviewer

A really good resource that includes a wide variety of activities which will engage the students. Very clearly set out and accessible for teachers... peer assessment is targeted so that students have something constructive to look for in each other’s work. I can see that this resource could be used in a variety of ways to enhance students’ experience of reading for pleasure. In particular the book review and blurb writing were nicely structured and I also liked the sequence of homework tasks looking at different types of books in the library... The resource will help students acquire a really good understanding of different types of books and, significantly, has many ways in which the students will become reflective readers exploring their choices and ideas... The presentation and layout were very clear, well defined sections and illustrations were used effectively to make the resource attractive

C Webb, English Teacher & Peer Reviewer

I love the concept of getting students to engage with reading... there are some great tasks with varying degrees of challenge... The ‘creating a book blurb’ task I really liked as an opportunity to encourage students to write more concisely. I also liked the peer assessment criteria to enable students to know how they can succeed at a task... provides valuable opportunities for students to engage with reading in a meaningful way

R Knight, English Teacher & Peer Reviewer

There are a variety of tasks that would suit a wide variety of children, so there is something for everyone. It also has links to many skills and techniques that can be developed in preparation for KS4 English, such as exploring how characters are represented in a text. Overall, it is a good resource to use for stand-alone reading lessons, or as part of a homework scheme to enhance reading for pleasure... the whole resource lends itself well for independent work in small, manageable chunks... It builds on a number of AFs and has links to skills required at GCSE.

K Carson, English Teacher & Peer Reviewer

A useful resource for getting ideas about approaching reading... Really useful for a teacher who needed a longer term homework project to assign over a number of weeks... I like the fact that it has a range of different activities that would suit different learning styles of the class... It encourages readers to think about reading in different ways... The reading log is useful as reluctant readers would get encouragement from seeing their list grow through the year; this would go a long way toward convincing them that they are readers, despite their previous protestations... It encourages reading... good for KS3 when forming good habits is essential.

A Baiden, English Teacher & Peer Reviewer