Reading engagement

Children reading in their school library

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We offer advice and support for creating a school-wide reading culture with the school library at its heart. Creating engaged readers takes commitment to developing a reading culture that actively encourages, supports, and models reading for pleasure.

Fluent and reflective reading improves literacy, social skills and well-being, and enables independent learning.

Contents

Students love reading graphic novels.

Understanding reading engagement

Find out what reading engagement is and why it matters. Explore ideas, strategies, and research for engaging students with reading by creating a community-wide culture that supports reading for pleasure.
Collage of 3 photos. A teacher reading a book to a group of students. Group of students sitting at tables in a school library. Father and child reading at home.

Creating a reading community

Find out how school staff, school and public libraries, and families and whānau can work together as a community to support and motivate students to read for pleasure.
Boy reading.

Libraries supporting readers

Explore strategies for creating reader-friendly environments and policies that ensure students have access to a range of reading material, services, and support.​
Jigsaw artwork response to children's literature.

Children's and youth literature

Children’s and young adult (YA) literature is rich and diverse, spanning multiple formats and genre. Increase your knowledge and understanding of the literature, and discover strategies to evaluate and promote it to engage students in reading.
Teacher reading

Teachers as readers

Teachers help students become readers when they understand the importance of reading for pleasure and are reading role models. This requires you to know your students, know children’s literature and to share your enthusiasm for reading.
Strategies to create readers.

Strategies to engage students as readers

Explore a range of strategies you can use in the school library, classroom or across the curriculum to encourage and support students to read for pleasure.
Child summer reading in a hammock

Summer reading

Summer reading is an important activity for children and teens to help prevent the summer slide in reading levels. Discover how schools, school libraries, public libraries, and families can collaborate to help prevent the summer reading slide.
Red and white video play icon superimposed over a laptop keyboard and screen.

Videos

Watch videos about successful strategies and approaches for school libraries, reading engagement, digital literacy, and for using teaching and learning resources.

Stories

These stories showcase innovative and successful initiatives that New Zealand school librarians and teachers have implemented to inspire and engage students with reading and learning.
Laptop open outside on grass with research-related terms showing on screen

Research

This research is a curated collection of important and thought-provoking recent publications. It highlights national and international research in the areas of school libraries, digital literacy, and reading engagement.
Reading engagement
Reading engagement