Research School Network: Bring the World into the Classroom by Aspirer ELE Jo Munro

The recent research paper by Anne Castle, Kathy Rastle and Kate Nation (Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert) highlights the importance of motivating children to read. This reflection by Jo Munroe explores the impact of her attempts to enthuse and engage her class to read more, by bringing the world into her classroom, using the world of social media.

As an avid social media ​‘Tweeter’, I was intrigued to see if I could link with the children’s authors on Twitter to really inspire reading amongst our children. I wanted to use social media to my advantage and so contacted a number of authors, asking them if they would consider tweeting personal messages to my class who were reading their books for pleasure.

I had personally selected books for each of my 24 children based on what I knew about them and then contacted the author – I wanted to really create excitement and a love of reading from the moment they entered into Yr 6 at the start of the year. After receiving a wonderful response from the authors, I gathered a personal message for every child. I left their new book and personal message from the author on their desk., ready for them, as they arrived. The sheer delight and excited chatter was heart-warming and it created an instant classroom buzz- the children felt so important and special.

I even treated myself – I put a new book and message on my desk and now during reading for pleasure time, I will sit with my book and the children love it…we chat about our books and take great pleasure in sharing our thoughts and recommendations.

Using social media in this way, to connect the world to my classroom has really helped us. We are definitely becoming a class who reads for pleasure!