Reading: how to select and prepare high-quality teaching resources

Find advice from the DfE's 2021 reading framework, to help you make sure your staff have only the best resources at their fingertips for teaching reading.

Last reviewed on 21 March 2022

School types: All · School phases: All

Ref: 44368

Contents

Teachers should promote a love of reading by showing that they love stories.

But, this doesn’t mean that they should only choose the books that they loved as a child.

Choose books that:

Engage pupils emotionally
Elicit a strong response, such as curiosity, anger, excitement, laughter or empathy
Have a strong narrative that will sustain multiple readings
Extend pupils’ vocabulary
Have illustrations that are engaging and reflect children from all backgrounds and cultures
Help pupils connect with who they are
Help children to understand the lives of people whose experiences and perspectives may be different from their own (find out how to improve diversity in your children’s books)
Include stories set in both the UK and around the world
Include both modern and traditional stories
Include fiction and non-fiction

Note: it's unlikely that just 1 book will meet all of these criteria, but the full selection as a whole should cover them.