The present dissertation recurs to the literature about effective schools and school spaces in order to reference a research in three municipal public schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro which have had a remarkable performance in Reading at the two first longitudinal results from Geres (Estudo Longitudinal da Geração Escolar 2005). The literature reveals that the materiality of school is a relevant factor in the constitution of determinate school practices and is able to constrain or stimulate the social dissemination of certain knowledge and competences. More specifically, through the study of the uses and functions of school spaces and objects as, for instance, a room in school for activities of reading and writing, the school`s and classroom`s bulletin boards and an area in classroom with a small library, the present research attempts to enlarge the understanding of the whole pedagogical duties activated in the interior of the investigated schools that keep a more straight relation to the development of basic reading and writing abilities. Aiming that, incursions to the schools were carried out throughout the year of 2007, in three strategic periods of the school calendar (beginning, middle and end of term) with the objective of photographing the privileged spaces designated to the support and the promotion of reading. Based on the analysis implemented from this register, it was possible to identify relevant aspects of the researched institutions, ruled by its nature, dispositions, uses and functions of spaces and objects related to the promotion of reading, contributing to the understanding of school effectiveness from the point of view of the school visual discourses as learning promoting factors.