A passion for reading
20 November 2020Reading can be a fabulous experience. In order to inspire the students in his section, George Walsh, Director of English Primary, has initiated the project “Read. Dream. Share”. He is telling us all about it in the interview below.
What is the “Read. Dream. Share” project?
“Read. Dream. Share.” is the theme of this year’s Children’s Book Week (CBW), an annual celebration of books for young people and the joy of reading. Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running international literacy initiative. Every year, events are held globally at schools, libraries, bookstores, homes — wherever young readers and books connect!
At IIL, we interpreted this theme with a unique approach and used it as a lever to enhance our Cohesion Project between the English and French Primary Sections. Classes from the English and French sections joined together to share stories with a similar context. This formulated a shared reading experience. Taking inspiration from their reading, students used their imagination and creativity to express their experience through writing, artwork, drama and music. At the end of the week classes across the sections joined together once more, dressed as their favorite book characters, to share their journey. Students really did “Read. Dream. Share.” and it was great to see how much they enjoyed it!
Why did you want to do it?
We live in a constantly changing world, where tablets and game consoles are an easy distraction for children during their leisure time. It is important that we do not forget about the power of reading. The “Read. Dream. Share.” project encourages all children to develop a lifelong love for reading. Our aim is to highlight the enjoyment reading brings whilst developing creative minds and better imaginations. Reading skills are vital for all students to make good progress in all areas of the curriculum. At IIL reading acquisition starts with our youngest students through our outstanding phonics programme and develops throughout the Primary Key Stages until students are able to use inference and deduction skills. Students also start to appreciate the power of language and begin to identify when authors use strategies to achieve a desired effect on the reader.
What have the reactions been so far?
The students and teachers really enjoyed participating in this special project dedicated to reading. It was an excellent opportunity for us to build an understanding of language across both sections of the school and of course the children had lots of fun along the way. It was lovely to see the students sharing their wonderful work and it was clear to see that they had been motivated by the stories they had read together. We hope to build upon the success of this project and plan future initiatives that will continue to build a passion for reading.
