Helping children develop a love of reading – and how to use the winners of the English 4-11 Picture Book Awards in the classroom
Join us for an English Association webinar about all things books and reading. Host Megan Dixon will be joined by Professor Teresa Cremin (Open University) and Dr Sarah McGeown (Edinburgh University) to chat about developing reading for pleasure in the classroom, what helps children develop a love of reading and how this year’s winners of the English 4-11 Picture Book Awards can be used in the classroom.
Useful links
- Read reviews of all the winners of the 2023 English 4-11 Picture Book Awards – reviews written by education specialists for teachers and practitioners
- Explore reviews of brilliant children’s books, all sorted by curriculum topic
- Love to Read The website includes the Love to Read programme, editable resources for teachers, posters for classroom walls and bookmarks for children. It also includes the final project report which has full details of the project and evaluation of Love to Read.
- Open University Reading for Pleasure Explore this website based on the Teachers as Readers research. The research that Teresa introduced in the event, Seeing Beneath the Surface: The OU Picturebook Framework, will be placed on the site in September under News and Publications. The new Reading and Wellbeing research is not yet published.
- Bookshop.org collection Support local bookshops and purchase this year’s winners from Bookshop.org
Our speakers are:
Megan Dixon
Megan Dixon has a wealth of school leadership, school improvement and policy experience, including working for the Education Endowment Foundation, as a MAT Executive Leader, as a Local Authority English consultant, as a Head Teacher, teacher trainer and a teacher. She has balanced a career in school with an academic career and is currently studying for a doctorate at the University of Sussex, UK. Her specialist interests lie in the teaching and learning of literacy (in particular reading comprehension), early years, special educational needs, language development and leadership. Megan writes a weekly column for the Times Educational Supplement, regularly presents at conferences and is often found writing in collaboration with researchers and academics.
Teresa Cremin
Professor Teresa Cremin is a Professor of Education (Literacy) and Co-Director of the Literacy and Social Justice Centre at The Open University in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies. https://wels.open.ac.uk/research/lsj Professor Cremin is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences,(AcSS) the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) and the English Association (EA). Additionally, she is a Trustee of the UK Literacy Association (UKLA), a DfE expert on reading for pleasure, a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, and chair of the Advisory Group for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund for the Arts. Previously she has served as President of the UK Reading Association and the UKLA, a Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT) and a Trustee of the Poetry Archive and SES. She has also served as a visiting Professor at Edge Hill University, a Board Member of BookTrust and as editor of the Journal Literacy and co-editor of the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity. Teresa has been a practising primary teacher, a staff development co-ordinator in a local authority, and has worked extensively in Higher Education both with initial teacher education students and with practising professionals. Currently her work mainly focuses on research and knowledge exchange, although she is also involved in teaching and consultancy, leadership and management. Teresa gained a Psychology degree at Bristol University, a PGCE at Homerton College, Cambridge, a Masters Degree at the Institute of Education, London and her PhD through the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Sarah McGeown
Dr Sarah McGeown is a senior lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on children’s and young people’s reading motivation and engagement, and how to encourage more children and young people to choose to read in school and at home. She currently leads the Love to Read project and is author of a UKLA minibook for primary and secondary teachers and school leaders to support reading for pleasure.
