Turning others' leaves: snapshots of reading in London classrooms

What happens when London secondary school students read literary texts in the classroom? Is the model of literacy, and of development in literacy, that is offered in official policy documents adequate to encompass the ways in which students read? If not, what gets left out of such policy‐derived accounts? And what part is played in such readings by students' knowledge of other texts, and of the world beyond the classroom? This paper seeks to address these questions through a series of snapshots of reading within different classrooms across London.