posted on 19 Jul 2016

Caught or Taught – Developing a Love of Reading : Neil Griffiths

Some time ago I booked to go to this free event hosted by Peter’s Books and Furniture in Birmingham. This impressive organisation deserves a brief mention before I go on to tell you all about the wonderful Neil Griffiths. It is now apparently the UKs leading supplier of books to schools with approximately 37,000 titles available to buy on the spacious and pleasant shop floor. They also sell a range of shelving and library furniture. What makes it so special is that it is staffed by very friendly and helpful people, including eleven qualified librarians who are there to give advice and support to those who visit the well- stocked showroom and to go out into schools to provide advice about books and the reading environment. Like many other Birmingham teachers lucky enough to work in schools near to this treasure trove, I have visited and bought wonderful books from here on several occasions in the past. It now seems to be even bigger and more substantial than I remember with several buildings including a dedicated area for training courses.

It is always pleasing to come across a kindred spirit who is passionate about the importance of children’s books and Neil Griffiths certainly didn’t disappoint. He is famous for having the original inspiration for ‘Storybags’ as a way of enthusing children and their parents about books. For those of you that don’t know what they are, they consist of a bag with a book inside plus several props that are relevant to the story. So for example Goldilocks and the Three Bears would have three bears, bowls, spoons, chairs and beds of different sizes plus a girl doll. This allows the child and adult to play out the story whilst reading the book and re-enact it afterwards over and over again. They are used in classrooms by teachers and other practitioners and children also take them home to share with their families. Commercial versions of these are now available to buy from Peters and other places but more importantly, staff and parents in nurseries, schools and libraries throughout the world now also make their own, cheaper less sophisticated bespoke versions. Students are required to make a story bag as part of many Early Years Childcare courses and how these are used with children in their placements is used as part of their assessment. They have thus become an accepted undisputed part of the Early Years curriculum. Neil admitted that he certainly wasn’t the first teacher to bring stories to life in this way but that he had produced huge numbers in his school with the help of parents and then the coercion of members of his local Women’s Institute. The idea continued to snowball and he initially took a year’s paid sabbatical to develop the initiative. Thirteen years later, he has never returned to working in a school and clearly enjoys his new role as a popular and well regarded advocate for enjoyable reading.    

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this event to be honest and almost didn’t go along as had a very sore throat that day. Thankfully, Neil is a charismatic and enthusiastic storyteller who kept me and all his audience entertained for about two and a half hours. He is also the author of more than 30 children’s books - which I wasn’t aware of. At the beginning, he explained that this was an unconventional training event because he had for a long time been fully independent and liberated from mainstream education and being told how to do such things in particular ways. I really loved the way that he revelled in not being at all constrained . As an ex head teacher in a Primary School he gleefully remembered the tedium of pretending to care about parents endless complaints about lost sweatshirts, the absurdity of convoluted risk assessments when planning trips, and endless silly educational jargon,  all of which he illustrated with hilarious anecdotes.  He was also dismissive of using group work and pair work that is often used on more traditional training courses and what a complete waste of everyone’s time it is. As he rightly said, ‘you couldn’t care less about what the person next to you thinks and neither do I ‘– excellent honest stuff!

Aside from all the funny stuff, he talked with great affection about how his father, a single parent had shaped him as a reader and given him an ‘amazing and fortunate start’. He told us that he remembered a ‘ dream childhood with stories to die for’ and then showed us the well- thumbed copies of The Wind in the Willows; The Water Babies, and Black Beauty that his father used to read to him and his brother every evening. He also reminded us that Janet and John, the reader used at school presented a narrow, boring and undemanding world in comparison.

He then asked the serious question: When there are so many great books out there for children, why are we in danger of losing them as readers who will continue to enjoy reading all their lives?

Whilst acknowledging that technology was important and that children needed to know how to use it from an early age, Neil reminded us that all need to have the chance to lick, smell, hug, and sniff real books before interacting with screens. As people in the audience nodded wildly, he decried the use of using the Phonics approach too soon and too exclusively as a way to teach reading; the over early start of formal education in England compared to many other countries; the over assessment and consequent pressure on even very young children; and the lack of sufficient attention to providing exciting experiences and developing children’s imagination. 

He also pointed out that the excuse given by many teachers of not having enough time to read stories in schools was both ridiculous and dangerous. He applied the same criticism to parents being apparently ‘too busy’ to read with their children. As he reminded us, his own father managed to do this every evening as a single parent with a full time job – it was about making choices about what was important.

He felt that changes in teacher training have meant that many of the wrong people are now going into teaching as a career and the importance of enthusing children with the magic of books is seriously downplayed when grading competencies to teach. He wants to see a return to valuing teachers who can be confident to perform a story to a class and to inspire them to love reading all year round, not just during the annual ‘Book Week’.

I am only giving a glimpse of the inspirational content here. He finished with some positive and familiar tips

 

·         Be a role model as an obvious reader and let the children you work with see you as a teacher who can’t resist physically holding, stroking and patting books

 

·         Provide a range of fictional and non- fictional reading material to send home and don’t be snooty about it eg fishing magazines; Argos catalogues; menus etc

 

·         Every school needs a dazzling library, it doesn’t need to be big but needs to be cherished by children, parents and staff, ideally with a dedicated librarian. This is not an impossible dream and in Tower Hamlets every school still has a librarian.

 

·         Read stories throughout the day, not only at the end of the day. Story reading is demanding and skilful whatever the age of the children and it is important to have a good and exciting repertoire

 

·         Send books home to be enjoyed by children and parents – don’t turn reading into a terrible chore (a very entertaining excellent role play to demonstrate this at this point)!

 

·         Every child has a reading flame - keep it alight whatever it is!

 

If you ever get the chance to see Neil Griffiths in action – do take the opportunity to see him and I promise that you will come out feeling inspired and more than ready to change the world.

 

Karen Argent

July 2016