While children's technical reading attainments have been rising nationally, their enjoyment and understanding of what they read has been measurably falling. The CLPE's Power of Reading project addresses this paradox and we see a participating teacher at work in Edmund Waller Primary School, Lewisham. Year 2 teacher Catherine Gdula shows us work her class has done around the picture-book character 'Beegu', empathising with the little alien, interpreting both words and pictures to 'read' different characters and their actions, and then making their own little books. The class arrives and starts work on a new book, 'Grace and Family'; they already know this character, but not her new adventure. Building on the first few pages of the new story, role-play and brainstorming fill the children with such excitement and so many ideas that they can't wait to get writing and pour them happily into an 'in-character' diary.

Video Series: KS1/2 English
Release Date 2006