Enjoying Reading - Policy and Resources

Enjoying Reading

This section sets out the policy framework for the Enjoying Reading approach. It also offers a range of practical resources and tools to help you improve your support for children and young people’s information literacy skills in partnership with libraries.

Advocacy

As a partner in Enjoying Reading, the National Literacy Trust has worked with practitioners to develop two new advocacy booklets. The 24 page booklets look at reader motivation and address how public library and primary school partnerships can support teachers in delivering the curriculum. They also contain examples of successful school-library partnerships.

Policy

  • The Libraries and Schools Policy Map (pdf, 47kb) outlines key government policies and policy drivers coming from:

    • Department for Children, Schools and Families
    • Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    The document summarises the aims of each policy and how libraries can help schools to meet them.

    Information Literacy Resources

    In this section you will find practical information and resources to develop information literacy skills in school, in partnership with school libraries, schools library services and public libraries. Useful links to guides and toolkits are available from the Enjoying Reading information literacy links section.

    Why students need information literacy skills

    Information literacy is a skill needed by everyone to function effectively in the information society.  Students need to use a wide range of information sources, from the internet, books, other people, television, newspapers and magazines etc. It is important that they develop the skills to evaluate the quality and relevance of information as they learn to become more independent and successful learners. It is therefore essential that Information Literacy is developed from an early age. 

    In their report Good School Libraries Making a Difference to Learning, (March 2006) Ofsted noted that ‘the quality of pupils’ information literacy skills was often unsatisfactory.  Many pupils struggled to locate and to make use of information.  The most effective schools had put in place systematic programmes for teaching these skills.’ They recommended that schools should ‘develop the quality and coherence of programmes for teaching information literacy to provide better continuity, challenge and progression in pupils’ learning’ and ‘consider ways to promote pupils’ independent study by more effective use of the library’.

    What Information Literacy includes

    Information literacy requires primary and secondary school students to have an understanding of:

    • a need for information
    • the resources available
    • how to find information
    • the need to evaluate results
    • how to work with or exploit results
    • ethics and responsibility of use
    • how to communicate or share your findings
    • how to manage your findings

    How libraries support information literacy

    Public libraries, school libraries and schools library services are all skilled in supporting information literacy skills in and outside school, for example through:

    • study skills classes in the school library
    • Schools Library Service resources and INSET training for schools
    • homework clubs and study support in the public library

    The Enjoying Reading information literacy links section can direct you to information literacy websites, toolkits and ideas.

    The School Library Association has mapped information literacy against each curriculum key stage to provide a starting point for teachers and librarians who are keen to make full use of their own school library and of visits to their local public library.

    Information literacy and curriculum skills maps:

     

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