About
500 Books has been developed to provide teachers with details
of some of the best available books for young children which
they can read and share with their pupils irrespective of the way
reading is actually being taught. The unique feature of 500
Books is that it gives teachers the opportunity to link their
teaching of core phonic skills and sight word reading to ‘real
books’ rather than have to reply exclusively on graded books
from a reading scheme. This is done through 500 Books’
distinctive approach to skill matching.
It can be argued that the main purpose in teaching young children to read is so that they enjoy books and stories and read
for pleasure. A long standing problem in teaching reading has
been that many children never reach a point where reading is
pleasurable. For example, as far back as 2004 Ofsted (O ffice for
Standards in Education) found that few schools, ‘were
successfully engaging the interest of those who, though
competent readers, did not read for pleasure (p4). More recently
in 2012 Ofsted lamented, ‘there has been considerable recent
concern about an apparent decline in reading for pleasure (p6).
They continued, ‘Inspectors also noted the loss of once popular
and e ffective strategies such as reading stories to younger
children (p29). There are many contrasting views to explain why
this is the case but there is little doubt that there is now a strong
consensus amongst teachers, parents and government that all
children should read for pleasure and see reading as a life long
source of enjoyment.
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