I Love to Read Week
One of the things I’m currently trying to accomplish at one of my schools is to have it become apart of the South African Readathon 2006 program. I think it would be a great accomplishment for a village school which doesn’t typically find itself encouraged in the area of literacy. Thus, this last week I’ve had an “I Love to Read” week to promote this goal, as well as to encourage reading with both the teachers and students.
On Monday we started the week off with a “drop everything and read” day. The premise for this was that every time classes heard a bell ring they dropped what they were doing and read for ten minutes. It was cute to see the kids scrambling to put their stuff down and listen to the stories their teachers read to them at these intervals. The teachers commented to me after about how they were surprised at how engrossed and attentive their children were during these intervals. I felt this admission from them was a huge accomplishment towards encouraging regular reading sessions to take place in the classroom.
On Tuesday Grades R-4 made their own autobiographies and Grades 5-7 dramatized stories they had read. The autobiographies turned out wonderfully. The kids drew themselves on the first page, wrote about what they liked to do on the second, wrote who they lived with on the third, and on the final page wrote about what they wanted to be when they grew up. I think everyone was impressed with the work that all the kids independently accomplished. The only thing I found worrisome was that some children wrote they wanted to be a tsotsi (gangster) when they grew up. The principal found it particularly funny that the children who wanted to be nurses drew them as heavier women since the ones that work at the clinic near us are all “big mamas.”
Wednesday was devoted to a spelling bee. The kids seemed to enjoy the competitiveness of the activity.
Thursday the older children came to the preschool-Grade 3 classes and read them stories. The kids seemed to enjoy having their classes “taught” by someone closer to being their peer than their teacher.
Finally, Friday was our award ceremony where we distributed prizes for both the spelling bee winners and children who had done particularly well during the week.
Overall, the event was a success, and I look forward to doing more activities with the school encouraging literacy.
On Monday we started the week off with a “drop everything and read” day. The premise for this was that every time classes heard a bell ring they dropped what they were doing and read for ten minutes. It was cute to see the kids scrambling to put their stuff down and listen to the stories their teachers read to them at these intervals. The teachers commented to me after about how they were surprised at how engrossed and attentive their children were during these intervals. I felt this admission from them was a huge accomplishment towards encouraging regular reading sessions to take place in the classroom.
On Tuesday Grades R-4 made their own autobiographies and Grades 5-7 dramatized stories they had read. The autobiographies turned out wonderfully. The kids drew themselves on the first page, wrote about what they liked to do on the second, wrote who they lived with on the third, and on the final page wrote about what they wanted to be when they grew up. I think everyone was impressed with the work that all the kids independently accomplished. The only thing I found worrisome was that some children wrote they wanted to be a tsotsi (gangster) when they grew up. The principal found it particularly funny that the children who wanted to be nurses drew them as heavier women since the ones that work at the clinic near us are all “big mamas.”
Wednesday was devoted to a spelling bee. The kids seemed to enjoy the competitiveness of the activity.
Thursday the older children came to the preschool-Grade 3 classes and read them stories. The kids seemed to enjoy having their classes “taught” by someone closer to being their peer than their teacher.
Finally, Friday was our award ceremony where we distributed prizes for both the spelling bee winners and children who had done particularly well during the week.
Overall, the event was a success, and I look forward to doing more activities with the school encouraging literacy.
posted by Cait at 2:26 PM
1 Comments:
Kait,
You rock my socks.
Bree
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