Students help develop new reading project

Students across the Lydiate Learning Trust are developing a love of reading by participating in Project L – the Trust’s new reading initiative.

Project L will see all students across the trust’s two secondary schools – Deyes High School in Maghull, and Childwall Sports and Science Academy – reading for pleasure with their form teacher every day.

The texts that they are reading together have been chosen from a carefully selected canon to challenge preconceptions about reading that may prove a barrier for less fluent or reluctant readers: that “readers” only read fiction, or that reading is a natural process and you are either inherently a confident reader, or you’re not.

The Lydiate Learning Trust Literary Canon launched last term with a non-fiction reader for every year group: You Are Awesome by Matt Syed for Year 7; I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai for Year 8; Born a Crime by Trevor Noah for Year 9 and The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed by Nicola Morgan in Year 10.

Claire Gillies, lead practitioner English at Lydiate Learning Trust said: “The books have been selected for their relevance, pace and engaging narrative voices, underpinned by research that suggests that reading texts aloud and at a fast pace can help to reposition ‘poorer readers’ as ‘good’ readers over a sustained period of time, this is a truly inclusive initiative to help to develop motivation to read, foster positive reading habits, and develop reading fluency across all subjects.”