Reading Role Models – a chance to regenerate your teachers’ love for reading

Thank you to everyone from our subscribing schools who has signed up for Reading Role Models. Your books are now being selected and will be with you before the end of term. Don’t forget to use the QR code on your bookmark to register your brief book review to receive your RRM poster by email

Happy reading!

Schools shared some good practice from 2023 that you might want to consider as well:

• Model great reading behaviours at the start of summer by talking about the scheme in assembly in July and tell the children that you will be taking part.
• When suggesting themes for SLS to use to select titles, think about what you will be teaching in autumn and whether you might want to read the book in class.
• Co-ordinate displays of both books and posters on return to school.
• Share your reading on social media and tag us in on Instagram @hantssls.
• Keep in touch with colleagues over the summer about your reading, feel free to swap titles amongst your group and if you would like support setting up a staff reading group for children’s titles – let us know.

By combining participation in RRM, using SLS@Home to support pupils with access to books, and promoting the Summer Reading Challenge in public libraries, everyone in school can relax with a great read over the summer.

A reminder about the scheme

We all know that children learn from positive role models in life and that activities that can seem boring or ‘uncool’ become more attractive if modelled by adults who children look up to. Ofsted’s “Now the Whole School is Reading” report in October 2022 highlighted how “raising the visibility of reading across the school so that all staff knew the part they played in supporting struggling readers” saw significant impact. But we also know that some teachers struggle to find time to read new children’s books and so aren’t in the best place to recommend relevant and enjoyable reads. 

SLS Reading Role Models is an initiative to help teachers find contemporary children’s books that we believe they will enjoy reading over the summer. Teachers from subscribing schools who register for the scheme will be sent a book chosen specially for them to read over the summer. The accompanying bookmark has a QR code linking to a phone-friendly review form which should just take a couple of minutes to complete.

The Review form will populate the majority of a template poster of the teacher's choice which will be emailed to the teacher along with instructions on how to embed an image of the book cover, or perhaps a picture of the teacher reading the book.

  

On return to school in the autumn, you can add the books to your library or book areas and use the posters to promote your reads to your pupils.