Photo by MTJ Media

What you can do:

• Talk can and should be spontaneous, but make sure you also plan speaking and listening opportunities into your teaching... Have a clear sense of the objectives you want to fulfil from a particular activity and how you want the children to progress
• Provide story tapes, talking stories or other such resources for children to listen to independently – hearing fluent readers read helps build children’s own reading fluency
• Make use of puppets in talk with younger children
• Use every opportunity to talk to children and to model conversation – make sure the talk is meaningful and a healthy two-way or group dialogue (let children do more of the talking than you wherever possible)
• Get children to talk about their reading – to reflect on events, talk about characters, predict what might happen next, share information they’ve learned etc
• Try ‘hot seating’ a character – real or fictional - while other children ask questions. This develops skills such as understanding and empathy and is also great fun!
• Use reading partners and reading groups to help children see reading as a social activity – the support of other pupils also helps reluctant readers. Linking up with other classes or other schools electronically can provide additional motivation for boys.
• Encourage parents to talk with their children at home – both generally and about reading

If you would like more information about the reasons for some boys’ underachievement in literacy and how we can overcome this we suggest you read the Project X Handbook: Get the Boys Reading and Writing: The Essential Guide to Raising Boys’ Achievement.