Reading Aloud as Intellectual Entitlement in the Ambitious Years.

Reading Steve Willshaw’s new book, Reading Aloud in Every Classroom, has prompted me to think more deeply about the place of reading aloud within an ambitious KS3 curriculum.

With the forthcoming consultation on the new KS3 programmes of study, much of the discussion will understandably focus on curriculum content. However, curriculum ambition is not secured by what is listed in a programme of study alone. It also depends on the curriculum we build from it and how pupils encounter its knowledge and language.

Reading aloud can give pupils access to texts they may not yet be able to read fluently for themselves, without reducing the intellectual challenge. It can preserve the flow of an explanation or argument and make more of pupils’ attention available for understanding what the text is communicating. This makes reading aloud much more than a literacy intervention or something that belongs only in English lessons. Used carefully, it becomes part of pupils’ intellectual entitlement.

There is an important disciplinary dimension too. In geography, reading aloud can help pupils encounter the distinctive language of the subject and follow complex geographical explanations. It can also introduce them to accounts and perspectives that take them beyond their immediate experience.

My latest Substack post draws on Steve’s book alongside Mary Myatt’s KS3: The Ambitious Years. It considers reading aloud as part of curriculum-making and asks what place it should have as departments begin to reconsider KS3.

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[Read the full post on Substack here: Reading Aloud as Intellectual Entitlement - Rob Chambers]