Amid nationwide concern that girls are more enthusiastic about reading than boys, staff at Saint Paul’s Catholic High School in Wythenshawe came up with the idea of an after-school reading club dedicated to the interests of boys in year 7.
Called Cover2Cover, the weekly club aims to make reading fun and enjoyable. Books are chosen with boys in mind, with football stories, joke books and horror tales proving popular.
During the weekly session the boys are currently reading Mr Stink by David Walliams.
Outside the club they are encouraged to choose a book that they find fascinating and read it for at least 30 minutes each day.
“Research shows that pupils who read more tend to have higher levels of attainment,” explained Angie Holland, assistant progress leader for year 7 at Saint Paul’s.
“We want to encourage the boys to read for pleasure and for it to be an enjoyable leisure activity – an alternative to reaching for the XBox or television remote.
“We are all enjoying Mr Stink at the moment. We take turns to read out loud and if we get stuck on a word then we look it up in the dictionary and it’s a new word added to our vocabulary.
“The club is a dedicated boys’ group as it is boys who tend to be underachieving in terms of reading attainment. To measure the success of the club the reading age of the boys is measured before they start the group and then at six-week intervals.”
Staff at the 870-pupil school have noticed that the year 7s taking part have gone from having “mostly negative attitudes to reading” before they joined the group to saying that they like reading “quite a lot” or “very much”.
Ms Holland continued: “It’s a fantastic way to engage the boys in reading and it really has made a massive difference to the way that the boys view reading now.”