Good morning!

Thanks so much for stopping by again. Last week was the beginning of a brand new year long series on my blog all about reading and getting children reading! I had loads of messages from parents, carers, teachers, head teachers, members of PTAs getting in touch to say that last week’s post was so helpful and that was SO lovely to read! If you were one of those people who sent me a message, thank you so much!

If you’re looking for an idea that only needs books and post it notes… keep reading!

Today’s post is all about recommendations…

Last week, I talked about the importance of being a reading teacher (or reading adult) in a child’s life and the importance of being that model to them. I also talked about the importance of having a space where children can talk about books.

Once you’re reading children’s books, you can start recommending them! And the beautiful thing is that recommending books can be as easy as pie to do! You can do the talking, or if you have the space within your class/school library, you can leave lovely recommendations on post it notes/bookmarks for children to see!

At the beginning of an academic year, I set up my class library and I have loads of boxes with different genre of books (I know, I organise by genre, not alphabetically… that’s a whole other post to do!) for my kids to choose from. In front of my books is a lovely bit of shelf left for me to leave books out that get post it note recommendations on from me.

As you can see from the images, these recommendations are short and sweet. There’s a range of books from graphic novels, to novels; finished copies to proof copies (children always love talking about things like this); short reads, longer reads; books with pictures to books with none. I like to get a range of books out there to reach the wide range of readers in my class (that’s both reading ability, reading identity and reading curiosity). Writing these reviews takes no time at all; altogether, it probably would’ve taken me about 5 minutes to do this!

This leads nicely on to my next part of this clever plan…

Children recommending to each other

Once children have seen my post it notes and have read and enjoyed books, they’ll start to ask if THEY can start recommending books to their friends… and absolutely is the answer from me!

Again, you can see, these aren’t the most detailed, but they’re straight from the children who have finished them! Some of them use the ones that I have written to help them write their own recommendations, and some of them go rogue! I don’t mind what they write (obv as long as it is a recommendation ha) and I ALWAYS love seeing them! I don’t limit the children to a certain book they have to recommend or a certain number of recommendations – if they enjoy a book they can pop a post it note on the inside/cover to help someone else understand if it’s for them!

This is a really simple and effective way to get children reading books from others that they trust – either you or their friends!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

I’d love to see this in action if anyone does give it a go! I’ll be swapping over my class library in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye on my Instagram for any recommendations (either from me OR my class!)

If there’s anything you think you’d LOVE to know about from my Reading reclaimed series, please drop it in the comments or let me know on Instagram (@thisgeordieteaches). I’d LOVE to guide this series with you guys!

S x