Devices eroding teens' reading attention (Newspaper feature)

Recently, The Sydney Morning Herald published a feature on the 2024 What Kids Are Reading Report by Renaissance Education, based on data from the Accelerated Reader Program, used by 440 schools across Australia.

Source: Harris, C. 2024. "Devices eroding teens' reading attention. The Sydney Morning Herald, October 26: 9. 

A table towards the top right of the article lists the top 20 books read by students in Years 9 to 12. While the number of books read by students has increased, concerns were raised about the difficulty of reading texts—students opting for easier rather than more challenging reads.

Diana Wing (Renaissance Education Australia) attributes this to a preference for social media and, hence, a preference for literature that does not require sustained focus. 

The challenge for me, as a Teacher Librarian, and for every Teacher Librarian, is to encourage and provide access to more challenging texts that require a more sustained focus. This adds to the challenge of just getting a person to read.

The second half of the article focuses on the role of school libraries in advocating for reading. Author Andy Griffiths stated that "libraries were essential to building a school's reading culture and ensuring that students, teachers and parents had access to and knowledge of a panoply of books". 

Midterm Action

It feels hard at the moment to sit and write about what I have been up to, read or reflected on.

It is an interesting time for me as I work out of a temporary library office as the library itself undergoes some building works for the rest of the term.

But the show goes on. We may not be able to lend books, but we can extend the loans or encourage students to borrow eBooks.

We have been processing new books which will head straight to our new books shelves when we reopen.

Also, I thought I'd share an article from The Sunday Telegraph (p. 19, 14 August 2022) with Dr Helen Adam from Edith Cowan University mentioning that there is ""really strong evidence" that schools with well-resourced libraries and a qualified teacher librarian got better NAPLAN and other test results". This was in response to research by Consumer Data Company Fonto revealing that 68% of parents think that their children read at least as much if not more than when they were youngsters.

Source: Cogdon, K. 2022. "Lockdown silver lining: our kids are reading more than we did". The Sunday Telegraph: 19.

What wsa encouraging too was that in the past two years more than 30 million childrens books were being sold on an annual basis in Australia.