Reading: like giving a baby a dummy...

What is it about reading that pacifies even the most demonic, hyperactive, impatient, chatty, immature, e-numbered class?

You spend the first fifteen minutes of the hour getting the darlings into your room: reminding them that they should be sat in their chairs; encouraging them to remove their jackets; lending out cheap, Tesco biros to the sweeties who don't have their own (despite the fact it is the first lesson of the day); getting them to put their gum in the bin - and watching them spit, miss and moan as they pick it off the carpet; and then standing there, patience waning, as you wait for them to stop chatting...

... and that part reminds me of seaside pier games. You know the ones: you have a rubber hammer and you hit the frogs or hamsters or moles as they pop up like Year Sevens who have downed three cans of Redbull at lunchtime - with a couple of bags of Skittles for good measure. Each time you thump one back into its hole, another two bounce up to take its place...

Anyway, fifteen minutes in. The one astute child (who shines out like a teacher's pet in a detention hall) reminds you of the page you got to last lesson and the reading begins.

Calmness descends.

Whatever happens (firebell, a drop in from the head teacher, the arrival of Ofsted),

don't
stop
reading.

Your life - and your sanity - depends on it.