READ Gloucestershire! 2023
READ Gloucestershire! is Read for Good’s Gloucestershire-wide campaign, bringing together local and national partners to inspire, empower and enable children and young people across Gloucestershire to read for pleasure, providing accessible support throughout the school year, and culminating this year in a collective and county-wide reading for pleasure celebration, taking place between 12—23 June 2023.
There are lots of ways to get involved this year, just choose what you’d like to do!
READ Gloucestershire! wouldn’t be possible without the reading for pleasure champions, advocates and enthusiasts we work with across Gloucestershire. We value your insights, thoughts and experiences enormously. Click on the button below to share your thoughts with us to shape the future of READ Gloucestershire!
READ Gloucestershire!’s One Million Minutes Challenge — June 2023
Whatever activities you join this June / July, be part of the READ Gloucestershire! One Million Minutes Challenge in which all reading counts, quite literally! Our free, online Track My Read® tool inspires pupils to log all their own reading for fun, you can also log the minutes shared in classroom read-alouds, attending our author events (see below) and time participating in our county-wide #DEAR and #DEAL moments (13th and 20th June). We’re aiming to read for pleasure together for one million minutes. Our goal is to unlock brand-new book boxes for children in the local community and an extra day of storytelling for children in Gloucester Royal Hospital.
READ Gloucestershire! One Million Minutes Group Challenge Code: 6v6%-YY2-G&-#.VZ
If you aren’t using Track My Read, add your minutes to the group challenge here!
Live, online author event with Andy Seed — Wednesday 14 June 10am
Exclusively for READ Gloucestershire! schools this Summer, watch a virtual event (recorded live, watched by 1,700+ children) with best-selling, local author, Andy Seed. Andy is the author of an incredible range of brilliantly interesting books, including the fabulous Interview with… animal series in which he meets a Shark, a Tiger and in his most recent book, a Kangaroo! Andy has also written historical and funny stories too.
Andy appeared online to meet READ Gloucestershire! schools at 10am on Wednesday 14th June 2023, he shared his fascinating, unusual book, Interview With a Kangaroo and Other Marsupials Too. The event includes a Q&A session with Andy. Watch the recording here!
Ideal for ages 5 — 9, but others may enjoy.
Duration: 45—50 minutes. Recording now available via the link above.
Key events during the READ Gloucestershire! 2023 reading for pleasure celebration:
- End of May / early June: READ Gloucestershire! resources will arrive in school.
- 1 — 30 June: Join the One Million Minutes Challenge with your whole school community.
- 12 — 23 June: launch your Readathon® sponsored read, if you’re running one.
- Tues 13 June (10am): “Drop Everything and Read” alongside Gloucestershire schools (#DEARGlos2023).
- Weds 14 June (10am): Live, online author event with Andy Seed (exclusively for Gloucestershire schools). Andy will be sharing his book Interview With a Kangaroo and Other Marsupials Too, ideal for ages 5 — 9. Ideal for ages 5 — 9. Duration: 45—50 minutes. Recording available after the event.
- Tues 20 June (2:30pm): “Drop Everything and Listen” alongside Gloucestershire schools (#DEALGlos2023). For KS1, listen to a story from Read for Good storyteller, Amanda. Access Amanda’s story here.
- Thurs 22 June (10am): Live, “Summer Party” author event, with Sarah McIntyre, Skye McKenna, Stephen Holland (Comics Laureate), Matt Goodfellow, and Read for Good storyteller, Wilf Merttens … all hosted by M. G. Leonard! Ideal for ages 7 — 13. Duration: 45—50 minutes. Catch up with the event recording here.
Make sure you receive our emails for resources, author events and MORE!
Resources to download and share across your entire school!
Access our inspiring Michael Morpurgo World Book Day event (March 2023)
“You’re the reader, and without you the story is pointless. It’s just words on paper. You are the people that make it come alive in your mind.”
— Michael Morpurgo
In this Q&A style event, Michael chatted to Read for Good hospital storyteller, Jen Lunn, about his inspiration for War Horse, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in Feb 2023. During the event Michael reads an extract from the book, plus a bonus reading of a powerful poem he wrote during lockdown. More than 650 schools across the UK joined this inspiring event, which brought more than 75,000 pupils together on World Book Day 2023. The event is approximately 45 minutes, including questions from schools and an interactive mini-quiz.
All Gloucestershire schools registered with Read for Good have been sent an email with links to watch our Michael Morpurgo event at any time. If you are a school in Gloucestershire and have not yet received these links, just get in touch with holly@readforgood.org.
Download War Horse teaching resources here, and read Michael’s introduction to the 40th anniversary edition here.
Prepare to get involved
Join us in Readathon®
Order your free Readathon resource kit to join other Gloucestershire schools as pupils read whatever they love and raise money to buy books for children in hospital. With vibrant, high-quality resources inside each kit, reading becomes even more exciting.
21/22 Author-in-Residence M.G. Leonard
Award-winning and best-selling author, M. G. Leonard, has produced a range of brilliant, key stage-tailored supporting videos for pupils, and a CPD session to help teachers and librarians incorporate reading for pleasure into their work.
Our fun app, Track My Read®
Track My Read is brilliantly simple: pupils log what they read, how long for and how much they enjoyed it; in return, teachers and librarians get valuable reading behaviour insights, building a wealth of evidence and knowledge about reading choices.
Click here to catch up on the previous READ Gloucestershire! events, which you can watch whenever you like.
More useful reading initiatives to explore…
We highly recommend layering your READ Gloucestershire! activities with the fabulous reading offers from other brilliant Gloucestershire-based charities.
Read With Me
Through its fantastic, free volunteer service, Read With Me provides one-to-one support in primary schools to help every child learn to read well before they go to secondary school and take a full part in education. Read With Me works as an extension of its partner schools: volunteers can come into your school at a time to suit you, working with your reading scheme and any initiatives, they hear each child for 10-15 minutes, twice a week. Read With Me can also provide additional books for reading reward schemes, and can top up class book collections. In some schools, Read With Me runs Rhyme With Me sessions for pre-schoolers as well as after school book clubs. If you’d like Read With Me to support your school get in touch with Founder, Linda Cohen, linda@readwithme.org.uk or read more here.
Cheltenham Festivals, Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils
Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils is a national network of teachers’ reading groups who read high-quality and diverse children’s literature in order to ignite the spark of reading for pleasure in teachers and, through them, their pupils. Teachers sign up for an academic year and attend a launch, five book groups and a Sharing Day between Oct — June. Teachers receive two free copies of the RTRP books, one for them and one for their school. The books are chosen by an expert panel and consist of three contemporary texts (published in the last two years), one anytime text an one picture book or graphic novel. RTRP is currently open to KS2 and KS3 teachers; applications for the 2023/24 academic year open in June. Find your nearest group and more information here, or email education@cheltenhamfestivals.com.
If you are already part of RTRP, and/or if your students benefit from Read With Me’s volunteers, get in touch with Holly McSweeney to see how Read for Good’s READ Gloucestershire! activities can complement this support, to nurture a whole-school culture which celebrates reading for pleasure.
*If you already receive our READ Gloucestershire! emails, you don’t need to sign up again.
With many thanks to Jennifer Hayward and Richard Waite, and The Notgrove Trust, for supporting READ Gloucestershire.