Love reading? Sit down with some Espresso and a good book

  

Espresso Education, the award-winning online curriculum service, has teamed up with Lovereading4schools.co.uk, the online independent book experts, to encourage children to find books, appreciate good stories, and enjoy reading, all through an online learning environment.  This initiative also supports the National Year of Reading and provides a reading legacy schools can use for years to come.

The recent drop in the number of 14-year-olds attaining the required reading standard has prompted fresh concerns that children need more encouragement to pick a book and get stuck into a good read.

With TV, mobile phones, the internet and computer games attracting the attention of media-hungry children, the traditional ‘book’ appears to have been sidelined. Yet, research continues to prove that children who develop a love of literature and enjoy reading will do better in school and achieve greater success later in life.

From September, teachers and pupils in over 10,000 schools using the Espresso Primary service will have access to new ‘Lovereading with Espresso’ modules. Within the modules, KS1 and KS2 students will be able read ‘Opening Extracts’ and explore items like high-quality jacket images and author biographies for twenty-four new books each term.  At launch, example titles will include classics such as The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks and more contemporary titles such as The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo and The 100 mile an hour Dog by Jeremy Strong.  The module supports teachers in their lessons by encouraging pupils to:

  • discover new authors,
  • explore writing styles, and
  • improve reading aloud.

Together, these benefits will help instill in children a love for books and reading for pleasure.

Mike Spooner, Head of Espresso’s Primary Service comments: “The ‘Lovereading with Espresso’ modules provide the perfect complement to our many existing reading resources like our modules on Authors and Book Reviews. We are delighted to be able to offer our users such a wealth of inspirational reading matter through this partnership”

Peter Crawshaw, Director and co founder of Lovereading added: “Espresso and Lovereading4schools are wonderfully complementary and we hope that making these books easily available through the Espresso software will at as a catalyst to ignite a love of books and literature in school children”

More about Lovereading4schools

Lovereading4schools.co.uk offers a unique way for schools to distribute reading lists to parents and encourages schoolchildren to read more. The site has already proved outstandingly popular, and over 3,500 schools now enjoy its benefits.

Lovereading4schools.co.uk is free to use, and registered schools can use specially created Template Reading Lists for each academic year from Year 1 to Year 9.

Lesley Langlands, a secondary school teacher from Lockerbie, said:

‘I would just like to say how impressed I am by Lovereading4schools.  As someone who has to select books for secondary school pupils, I am finding it invaluable. The extract downloads are great and they save me a lot of time. Thank you very much for a really useful website.’

As well as being popular with schools, Lovereading4schools.co.uk has been enthusiastically endorsed by Jacqueline Wilson, author and ex Children’s Laureate.

More about Espresso Education

With over 10,000 subscribing schools using its resources, Espresso Education is the leading digital curriculum service in the UK. Espresso is a cross-curricular library of high quality, video-rich teaching resources that stimulates learning, supports teachers and raises standards in the classroom. Espresso combines full-screen videos, multi-media activities, learning paths & reviews, cached websites and printable resources into engaging modules, all directly aligned to curriculum objectives.  The weekly news service features exclusive ‘News Bites’ video reports and interactive Telegraph news articles, drawing on topical events to bring learning to life.  Espresso updates its modules and news service weekly, giving schools access to the freshest, most relevant resources available in schools today. 

Espresso is the winner of the BAFTA for Learning Primary in 2007 the BETT Special Award for Inclusion in 2008.