Guest Blog: Marie Zarro
We are delighted to welcome Marie Zarro as a guest contributor, someone whose work we have long admired.
Teachers play a vital role in our mission to inspire reading for pleasure, and it’s the passion, creativity and commitment of educators like Marie that continually shape and inspire what we do. Her dedication to building reading communities and placing stories at the heart of the school day is something that has ripple effects in her school and beyond.
We were particularly inspired by Marie’s brilliant book swap initiative, a simple and powerful idea with the potential to inspire readers for life. We’re so pleased she has shared it with us here, and we hope it inspires many more schools, teachers and families to spread the joy of stories.
Turning Pages Together: The Impact of a Simple Book Swap
Children’s enjoyment of reading is at its lowest in two decades, with only 1 in 3 children aged 8-18 saying they enjoy reading in their free time.
This makes simple, community-centred approaches like book swaps more important than ever.
A Book Swap
A book swap is a simple yet powerful event that gets the whole school buzzing about books!
At its heart, a book swap encourages children to share high-quality books with others, and, in return, choose new titles for themselves to enjoy – all for free! We have found that this not only fosters a love for reading, but it also equips our children to be responsible stewards of this planet by choosing to re-use and re-cycle.
One of the biggest advantages of a book swap is that it gives children the opportunity to explore texts they haven’t read before. With each swap, pupils are exposed to new authors, genres, and topics that they may not have encountered otherwise. This can reinvigorate their enthusiasm for reading, helping to develop literacy skills, imagination, and empathy. By choosing their own books, children are also given autonomy in their reading, which can boost motivation and engagement. One child stated that, “It’s a good chance to share books that you have read and liked so that others can enjoy them too.”
Setting it up is easy – especially if you have eager and willing Reading Ambassadors or Eco Warriors who are happy to help. Our children like to use a token system whereby you are given a number of counters that matches the number of books you have brought in to swap. Once the counters have been distributed, and the books have been neatly presented in the hall, children are then invited to come and swap their tokens for books that are new to them.
This tends to take place during morning break so that they can then spend some time poring over their newly acquired reading material! It is such a treat to see the hall alive with children bustling around with books under their arms and smiles on their faces. As they filter out into the playground, it is lovely to catch snippets of shared discussions as children build on each other’s conversations and study the pages of fresh books!
The swap not only encourages reading but a sense of community and generosity. Children take pride in giving a book they’ve loved to someone else, knowing it will bring joy to a new reader. They can often be heard saying that, “I think that such and such would like this book.” Children speak fondly about book swap and have mentioned how, “It’s lovely that books don’t go to waste and that you can swap them with other people,” and, “It might not be a book that you have enjoyed, but someone else might love it.”
For families, it also provides an affordable way to refresh their child’s reading selection without financial pressure.
Sharing books in this way is simple and free, but the impact can be huge. For children who may not have a book to swap, we make that there is a box of books kept as a secret stash so that every child can join in with the book swap – after all, we want all children to have their own books!
Other things that help foster a love of reading in our school are:
Listening Leaves on the Audio Tree
For some children, a love of reading begins with hearing a story. Our audio tree has tags that children can listen to. This creates a calm, inclusive place where listening becomes an invitation into reading.
By offering access to texts in multiple formats, we support what Teresa Cremin calls the development of ‘readers for life’, not just readers for assessment.
Our Shared Class Padlet Page
Padlet is a web app that works on most digital devices. Our class padlet page has been a huge hit this year! It acts as a virtual noticeboard where children post recommendations, snapshots of books, and quick reviews.
It has fast become a low-pressure s social pace where children inspire each other, developing a sense of community, connection and belonging. Not only that, but it gives me an insight into their worlds of books!
Quick Reads for Busy Readers
A child in my class has set themselves the challenge of reading all the free World Book Day books that I have collected over the years. These are a handy – and inexpensive – way to collate sets of short reads that children can read side-by-side and chat about together.
This resulted in the birth of the Quick Reads challenge! Children who find reading whole books a bit challenging love the fast success, confidence and momentum that this provides them with.
Journaling the Journey
Giving pupils a page of their own in a class reading journal gives them a place where they can sketch characters, quote lines they love, write down words they have magpied, or record thoughts and themes. These reflective practices nurture deeper engagement with texts.
It is lovely when each child takes the floor and shares their page and the book they have read. This often leads to that book flying off the bookshelf and into the hands of other interested classmates!
Turning Pages, Together
Book swaps, audio trees, padlets, journals, and quick reads all create different doorways into reading. This list is far from exhaustive, but at a time when children’s reading enjoyment is at a twenty-year low, these simple, sustainable practices have helped us to rebuild and keep the joy, choice and community that underpin reading for pleasure.
They remind us that our goal is not to just teach reading, but to grow readers for life in all their wonderful forms.
Marie Zarro has 23 years of experience as a dedicated primary school teacher. She is passionate about instilling a love of reading for pleasure and fostering a lifelong love of learning for all children.
As a proud member of the Editorial Board for the 4-11 Primary Magazine she strongly values the work of English subject associations as essential in supporting teachers, shaping practice, and championing literacy across the primary sector.
As part of her ongoing commitment to fostering reading communities she leads a Teacher Reading Group as part of the UKLA and Open University Reading for Pleasure initiative.
More recently she has begun to branch out into sharing her practice more widely through conferences, podcasts, and online CPD, supporting colleagues across the profession and contributing to a broader conversation about effective literacy teaching.
As a child who was fortunate to be brought up into a story rich home, she tries to emulate this for all children during their school day.