Wednesday 1 March 2017

The Sharing of Books

This is the first of two World Book Day posts, the other will go into more detail about the books I have been reading this year. Over the last few months I have been revelling in the discovery of modern children’s books, many recommended on twitter.

This made me consider the state of reading in my class. They are mostly confident readers but I realised most of them read sporadically and had trouble settling to  a book. This coincided with finishing the book I was reading to the class: The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. The fact this was the start of a series got lots of them interested in carrying it on, I only had one copy of the sequel however, so I brought in lots of the children’s books I had been reading lately and said a bit about each to see if people wanted to borrow one. They went quickly and go in and out on a regular basis. I am currently lending 15 books to my class and wanted to share some nice stories that came out of this:

My class have taken on this spirit of sharing and a reasonable number of children are bringing in books to share with others.

A child with relatively little English borrow and read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Kate DiCamillo) and their mother with even less English is now reading it using Google translate.

A boy who I had previously struggled to get reading has enjoyed Cogheart (Peter Bunzl) and is now reading Who Let The Gods Out (Maz Evans) and keen to read several more that are going round.

A girl who has read at least 8 books I have lent, often bringing them back in a day or two.

I am now trying to reach those I haven’t yet, all but 5 have borrowed books at some point and enthusiasm for reading in the class has definitely increased including among some who previously said they didn’t like reading.

edward tulanecogheartwho let the gods outpenderwicks

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