‘Drop Everything And Read’ sessions encourage reading and literacy
'Drop Everything And Read' sessions encourage reading and literacy
Our school run a variety of initiatives as part of our communications agenda to improve reading and literacy. For our Year 7 and Year 8 students, one of the highly successful activities we run three times each academic year is DEAR Time, which stands for ‘Drop Everything And Read’.
This is where the whole class take turns to read a text and they then discuss what they have read to highlight key vocabulary and share their thoughts on the issues raised in the material. All classes focus on a different subject area so if they normally have a drama, history or maths lesson, their reading text can be relevant to drama, history or maths.
These sessions are designed to promote and encourage reading for all abilities and play a key part in our communications agenda in the school, which includes a high focus on literacy skills. There is evidence that when students read for pleasure this will improve educational outcomes and personal wellbeing.
It was really impressive to see how enthusiastic our students are about wanting to get involved and read the text and how the whole class engages.