Reading, teaching and a whole lot more!

Welcome, dear reader, to The Resourceful Reader's blog for book reviews with a teaching twist.

The aim of this blog is to provide honest information on books that I have used in my classroom as a Primary Class Teacher. I’ll give my personal and professional opinion on the book itself and as a teaching resource along with the classes or key stages that it would ideally suit. I love reading, so having a book for my class every half term is a superb excuse to do it as part of my day job!

The main focus for cross-curricular links is history as most primary schools base their reading or literacy around their history topic. However there will be some that fall into other categories such as geography, RE, science and some with no direct category in terms of curriculum, but that you can nevertheless link. Some just because they are good books and that you don’t have to link them to the curriculum. Reading can be reading for enjoyment as well as learning after all, and all the more important when this generation are hypnotised addicts; a slave to their screens.

All is not lost though. Only last week I overheard one of my pupils from last year ask a current pupil of mine which book they were reading in class, and then exclaim that that was their favourite book they read last year! That child went onto read other books by that particular author and genre, and I don’t mind admitting that I thoroughly enjoyed that fuzzy feeling of making a difference. All for a choice of book too!

For some books, I’ll shamelessly point you towards my own TES shop page with reading comprehension questions for each chapter. Find the ones I have done here, and also linked at the top of the homepage. I will put links on for the books in question; they are affiliate links which cost you nothing but I get a small amount from Amazon: got to make a living somehow eh?

The fact, dear reader, that you have stumbled across this blog means that you have some vested interest in children’s literature for education, so please enjoy and use! Happy reading!.