How representative are the books used to support the Year 1 curriculum?

MATTHEW COURTNEY, TEACHER AND CURRICULUM LEAD, WANDLE LEARNING PARTNERSHIP, UK The books that we use to teach our English curriculum matter. These are the texts with which children will spend an extended amount of time engaging, listening to them being read aloud and, perhaps, using them as a stimulus for writing or drama work. Alongside the texts that we read aloud to the whole class, the books that we use to teach our English curriculum are those that we can guarantee that all children in our classes at primary school will encounter and experience. We need these books to be high-quality and to provide what Professor Rudine Sims Bishop (1990, p. x) describes as ‘mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors’, allowing children to see themselves, their peers and wider society reflected in the books with which they engage. This article reports on the findings of a research project that explored the texts being used to support the Year 1 English curriculum. The research aimed to under