Reading Takes You Places

The board gives a class a shared record of what they have read, which is what turns reading from an individual task into something the room is doing together.

Students will be able to:

• Track books the class has finished across the year
• Recommend a book to a classmate in one sentence
• Describe a setting from a book they have read

Black and white prints as clean line art rather than a greyed-out copy of the colour version, so the class can colour it in. The preview above changes with this setting.

Pages

20

Colour pages

7

Black & white

13

Paper

• White: 20 sheets — Everything in the print pack
• Blue: 5 sheets — Title letters and sky
• Brown: 2 sheets — The path
• Green: 2 sheets — Ground beneath the landmarks

What is in the pack

• Title letters — READING TAKES YOU PLACES — 6 sheets, black and white

  R · E · A · D · I · N · and 15 more

  Twenty-one letters. Print READING TAKES large and YOU PLACES a size smaller on a narrow board.

• Open book, path and landmarks — 5 sheets, colour

  Open book across two sheets · Path segments · Castle · Mountain · Rocket · Clouds

• Landmark labels — 1 sheet, black and white

  adventure · mystery · history · science · poetry · fantasy · and 2 more

• Book markers — 3 sheets, black and white

  Thirty blank book-spine markers for students to write a finished title on · Pocket template · Class total counter

• Recommendation cards — 1 sheet, black and white

  I finished ______ and you should read it because ______. · If you liked ______, try ______. · The best sentence in this book was ______. · This book took me to ______.

• Book-spine border strip — 1 sheet, colour

  Repeating row of book spines

Change the title and the printable letters regenerate to match it.

1. 1

   Step 1 — Prepare the background

   Cover the board in pale blue. Leave the bottom fifth clear — the open book goes there and needs a clean edge.

2. 2

   Step 2 — Fix the open book

   Tape the two book sheets together at the back and fix the book across the bottom, centred.

3. 3

   Step 3 — Lay the path before you fix it

   Run the path up from the middle of the book in a loose S. Pin it in place and step back before stapling — a path that reads as a straight diagonal loses the whole effect.

4. 4

   Step 4 — Add the title

   Run READING TAKES YOU PLACES across the top, splitting it over two rows if the board is narrow.

5. 5

   Step 5 — Place the landmarks

   Castle low on the left, mountain in the middle right, rocket at the top. Each one sits just off the path, never on it.

6. 6

   Step 6 — Add the genre labels and pocket

   Put a genre label by each landmark and staple the book-marker pocket at the bottom right, low enough for the shortest child in the class.

7. 7

   Step 7 — Finish the border

   Run the book-spine border around the outside.

What students do

1. Finish a book.
2. Take a blank spine marker from the pocket and write the title and your name.
3. Pin it beside the landmark that matches the kind of book it was.
4. Add one sentence to a recommendation card if you want someone else to read it.

For the teacher: Count the markers at the end of each half term and write the total on the counter card. A visible total is what keeps a board like this alive past October.