Webinar: Reading and wellbeing at Key Stage 3
Join BookTrust as we explore the wellbeing benefits of reading at Key Stage 3 and see how reading for pleasure can help improve students’ mental wellbeing, emotional regulation and self-esteem.
Our recent webinar explored how reading can support and positively impact students’ wellbeing, summarising the latest research and cognitive science insights.
With Bookbuzz author Radhika Sanghani and school librarian Lucas Maxwell, we explore practitioner techniques, with actionable tips and advice, and discuss how authors create stories that can help students to build empathy, social skills and self-awareness.
We look at the Bookbuzz Key Stage 3 reading programme and show how it can help to develop reading for pleasure in your school.
About the speakers
Journalist, author and screenwriter
Radhika Sanghani is an award-winning journalist, author and screenwriter. Her book The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie is one of the Bookbuzz titles for 2025, telling a fresh, funny story about white lies, brutal honesty and a bangle with special powers!
Radhika’s work as a journalist has featured in many newspapers and magazines and she appears regularly on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She is a screenwriter and graduate of the 2020 BBC Comedy Writers Room as well as a TedX speaker on body positivity, a yoga teacher and runs a charity initiative with AgeUK fighting loneliness in older women.
School librarian
Originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, Lucas Maxwell has been a secondary school librarian in London for over fifteen years. In 2017 he won the SLA’s School Librarian of the Year award and was named the UK Literacy Association’s Reading for Pleasure School Reading Champion in 2022. He loves Dungeons & Dragons and is the author of Let’s Roll: A Guide for Setting up Tabletop Roleplaying Games in Your School or Public Library.
Senior Research and Impact Officer at BookTrust
Fiona is a Senior Research and Impact Officer at BookTrust. Previously, she worked in schools for over 10 years as both a teaching assistant and tutor. Fiona holds a PhD in Critical Media and Culture Studies. She recently completed postdoctoral research at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which explored children’s digital literacy in various school settings, focusing on enhancing their understanding of online rights and their ability to recognise and resist digital misinformation.