As reading continues to have a central place in each school’s curriculum we discuss the importance of a literary canon.

Doug Lemov (Teach like a champion; Reading reconsidered) makes a powerful case for schools establishing their own internal literary canon:

 

(Having a literary canon)…gives you a shared corpus of texts that we can all refer to – no book should exist in isolation…we should always be able to make comparisons.  One of the challenges today for teachers is there are very few books that you can assume students will have read and that limits teachers instructionally.

 

The notion of a canon has religious origins where the early church had to select those texts that were deemed to be sacred scripture – this then evolved to the idea of works of genius, and more recently, to quality texts.

 

The choice of text, along with an agreement of texts, is fundamental to establishing a literary canon, as Lemov continues:

 

Book choice is one of the most underrated factors in the importance of reading…some books are especially worth reading because they give us cultural capital…e.g. Lord of the Flies is a great work of fiction…there’s a myth that books are interchangeable

 

Having an agreed canon of literature from EYFS onwards supports the positive delivery of key aspects of Reading progression within the National Curriculum e.g.

 

KS1…recognise simple recurring literary language

KS2…identify themes and conventions across a wide range of writing

KS3…make critical comparisons across texts

KS4…making critical comparisons, referring to the contexts, themes, characterisation, style and literary quality of texts, and drawing on knowledge and skills from wider reading

 

Having a publicised whole school literary canon, that both pupils and parents are aware of, supports reading widely and promotes the idea of a reading journey that continues throughout school and into and through adulthood.

 

The intent of a school literary canon would be that every pupil knows each of the books sufficiently well through, for example, either having read the book themselves or through having the book read to them, for example, this could be a chosen text for the teaching of reading or a book that is used for class story-time.

 

There are many regularly updated lists that provide recommendations that can support each school in developing their own literary canon, e.g. CLPE.

 

Finally, as Doug Lemov eloquently states:

 

Schools can re-create this idea that we are going to set up our own standards of greatness – an internal canon that serves our school community.

When we all agree that we are all going to read these books, then you have a way of talking about shared texts across texts, and, being able to reference stories that everyone has read that makes all of these books more relevant and brings that one book to life.

 

LInk to podcast

Joy Parke – March 2020