Wednesday evening saw the continuation of the Mount Carmel Home-School Literacy Partnership program – a collaborative venture which recognises that parents are the primary and continuing educators of their children and that learning is life-long and occurs in multiple settings. The first of our Reading Workshops was held specifically for the parents and carers of our Year 7 cohort. This gathering of parents and teachers provided an opportunity for the exploration of the various books studied by Year 7 students as part of their Stage 4 English course.  The critical role of reading in maximising student learning outcomes at school as well as enriching one’s personal, social and workplace life beyond school, was emphasised.

Young people need stories to make sense of themselves and their world. Through the stories of real and imagined life they become aware of themselves as feeling and thinking beings who belong in a world potentially more complex than, or very different from, their own. Encounters with books – as well as being sites for enjoyment, and critical and creative thinking – play a significant role in the formation of young people’s identity. Marcel Proust, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century states, ‘Every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self’.

The engagement with a wide range of literature is central to the study of English and also to the development of critical literacy skills. Research has shown that student choice is a fundamental motivating factor in adolescents continuing to read for pleasure. In light of this, a rich diversity of reading materials is offered to students as part of a wide reading focus. English lessons incorporate abundant opportunities for students to read – with a balance between teacher and student selected materials, silent and shared reading experiences, and reading aloud by the teacher. Given adolescents’ daily immersion in a world that tends to require and reward immediacy and distraction, exposing students to, and engaging them in a variety of sustained texts as distinct from pieces of texts, is extremely important.