Boy-friendly reading material

From Usefulwiki

Not everything you are going to read with boys is going to be in a book. The programme has to engage the child and it may be that for some boys this will mean the range of reading materials your school has just isn't enough. You may need to be more creative in your search for 'the next best book'. It may well not be a book at all. Obviously we are looking for a range of material and books will form part of this but please try to see beyond the printed word.

Think:

• newspaper sports pages (reading ages of these can actually be quite varied and often lower than you'd think),

• web sites on specific hobbies. Reading these straight from the computer rather than printing them off can be a real draw for some boys. If they've no internet access at home then by all means provide a printed copy as well.

• Instructions for games or making things

• Magazines. (I once became very familiar with the BBC Robot Wars magazine!)

Boy-friendly can also mean Dad-friendly and this can make a huge difference to the outcome of boys' involvement in the programme. There's a great deal of research to back this up.

A note of caution

There is some research (add link) that suggests that many boys choose non-fiction books largely because they are more visual and have more cues. The suggestion is made that this effectively lowers the reading age of the material. This may well make it less daunting than a page of unbroken text so our aim must be to gently shift the child away from this comfort zone.

It is important to use a range of material with all children but especially with boys. It can be a hard balance to strike but this is where the skill of the partner really comes in. A bit of creative thinking can produce an acceptable reading diet of non-fiction books, printed material (perhaps newspaper reports of football or cricket), print outs from favourite topic centred web sites or blogs, and funny poems (humour is almost always acceptable). As confidence grows the balance between text and pictures can shift. You may never turn your reluctant reader into a bookworm. However, you may be able to achieve a confident reader who is no longer afraid to try.