I have a sofa in the corner of my classroom. It looks very comfortable but every so slightly out of place. It is used to hear children read, and also to read to children from. I have a colleague who can’t stand it, but it is one thing in my classroom I won’t concede. In my mind, I am using this sofa to aspire to normality. This is part of my Mont Blanc Defence (The Artist Hugh MacLeod once said that Hemmingway didn’t use a writing lodge and a Mont Blanc pen to write, so neither do you!).

My point is this – I read everywhere, in bed, on a sofa, eating breakfast (if I can get away with it), even lying on the floor with my feet against the radiator. If we are teaching children, we owe it to them to make some concessions to normality. Reading to a teacher once a day by standing next to them at their desk is not natural or normal. I appreciate that reading aloud isn’t even particularly common for adults, but the way that children relax into the sofa when they read makes a very tangible difference to the way that they read.

I also appreciate that the aspiration I am offering is within the context of my own personal aspirations; from the small details I’ve noticed, I’d simply say that normality for most actually is engaging, and that normality can and should be aspirational.