Despite being apart, Sadie Phillips wanted to bring the reading community of year 6 pupils at her school even closer together and so she created a Y6 Read Aloud Blog on the virtual learning platform Purple Mash and used Teams for teacher videos.
Despite the novelty of the medium she was able to build an online community of readers who talked remotely about books. Children enjoyed the experience of a shared daily read aloud (albeit virtual!). Significantly, this was volitional (children had a choice whether to participate or not and the overwhelming majority of children did). Children began to ask questions and over time take ownership of the discussion. Messages of thanks (from children and parents) were regular, which shows that they were enjoying the read alouds at home.
