Download a range of reading for pleasure activities designed to engage secondary students, enhance their retrieval skills and foster a lifelong love of reading…
‘Five seconds’ game
This engaging activity is ideal for pairs or groups. It offers a fun way to reinforce retrieval practice while helping students make connections between the stories they read in class and those they explore in their own time.
Step 1: Download the worksheet from the top of this page, which features a variety of ‘Name 3’ prompts. Provide each pair or group with a stack of ‘Name 3…’ cards.
Step 2: A student selects a card and attempts to name three examples related to the card’s prompt within five seconds. If they don’t succeed in time, another member of the group gets a turn.
Step 3: Ask the students to keep track of their scores, awarding one point for each correct response.
To add an extra layer of motivation, you could create a class leaderboard and celebrate top scorers.
30-day reading challenge
Use this 30-day reading challenge to help students build confidence while enhancing their reading skills.
This challenge is an excellent way to encourage students to broaden and deepen their reading habits. You might also introduce half-termly or termly challenges that spotlight different genres or authors.
No matter how you implement it, this type of reading challenge can be a highly effective way to address the unique needs of individual students.
Meera Chudasama is an English, media and film studies teacher with a passion for design and research, and has developed course content for the Chartered College of Teaching.
KS3/4 English lesson plan
If you’ve heard one too many students tell you that ‘Reading is boring’, then try these reading for pleasure activities from Karl Vadaszffy…
By bringing in books you won’t find on the school’s reading list, you can show pupils that perhaps it’s not the reading that’s boring, but the books they’re reading.
We all know that reading is subjective – what one person loves, another will hate. The key, though, is to work out how to attract students to books so that, on the whole, they have positive reading experiences and, in turn, think positively about books.
Making reading seem fun, exciting and valuable, especially when children have been brought up in a quick-fix culture, is a challenge. But a great solution is closer to home than you might think. Think of what you liked when younger, what you like today and scour the bestseller lists.
Find novels that will grab students, hooking them from page one. After all, bestseller lists are filled with popular novels, and they must surely be popular for a reason.
Karl Vadasjffy is head of English at St Michaels Catholic High School in Hertfordshire. He is also a freelance journalist and bestselling novelist. Browse more reading for pleasure ideas or take a look at our Year 8 English worksheets.
