A University of Sheffield senior lecturer has partnered with World Book Day to provide a reading activity across the UK today.

Dr Sabine Little of the School of Education developed the ‘Rivers of Reading’ activity following a career dedicated to working with multilingual families.

Dr Little wanted to investigate the development of reading habits of multilingual children across their languages, with the project designed so that children and their parents/teachers can discuss the ways they approach reading.

Dr Little spoke about her research in the development of this project. She said: “When I worked with the National Literacy Trust, to understand multilingual children’s reading habits, we found that multilingual children are more likely to read for pleasure.

“I began to see connections between the way multilingual children think about reading and how this translates into them reading more.”

The ‘Rivers of Reading’ activity has been included in World Book Day packs sent out to schools across the UK. The activity involves getting children to think about key milestones in their reading journey.

They are asked to create a list of books which could be from their earliest memory of reading, their favourite book, a book they hated, a book they read over lockdown and more.

Once a list of books is formed, children can start to map them out on a ‘river’- this could be drawn in their workbooks, a PowerPoint presentation or a 3D river made with a long roll of paper and paper boats, with the books as passengers on the boats.

Multilingual children are particularly encouraged to share their reading experiences in other languages, with around 20 percent of school pupils being multilingual.

Dr Little has previously helped to create Sheffield’s Children’s Multilingual Library in 2018 with over 500 books in languages from around the globe, with the project winning the International Brenda Eastwood Award for Diversity and Inclusion in 2019.

Dr Little said: “I am constantly ‘flying the flag’ to help schools understand that children’s languages are an asset to their learning, not a barrier.

“So I am very happy that World Book Day have been working with me to highlight the importance of reading across multiple languages, and how we can learn from multilingual children to improve reading for pleasure for all.”