Why do they love BOB?

Posted on October 3, 2018 by abond

This is our fifth year offering Battle of the Books (BOB) at our school. It continues to be a very popular event for upper primary classes. We deliberately choose titles the students may not choose to read. We always have a ‘classic’ a book that has stood the test of time, “Mrs Frisby and the rats of NIMH” or “The phantom tollbooth”. We include a nonfiction title – last year it was “The boy who harnessed the wind” the year before it was “Trapped” the true story of the rescue of the miners in Chile. This year we have introduced a new category – the graphic novel to complement our existing category of the sophisticated picture book.

What is the appeal of BOB?

I think it is fun of reading books outside your normal interest areas and ranges. Many of our students read at least one of the books and a few read all seven. The way we run the quiz is that teams of up to four students enter the quiz together and they should ensure that all of the books have been covered by the team. So some students might read three others four or five but as a team they have the seven books covered.

A lovely additional part of BOB is that over the years we have created a few collections of multiple copies of titles and so our students create their own book clubs and use the BOB books from previous years to discuss.

Students create practice questions and each question gets one point to take into the competition. Each team can take a maximum of three points into the competition so past winners have often scored 22/20 points for this reason.

There is no compulsion to be part of BOB but when we run the quiz there are kahoot quizzes for the audience and they can join in with the main quiz as well. One of my colleagues thinks the appeal of BOB is the competition element. We do have trophies for the winning team.

I get my inspiration for possible book titles from the Battle of the Book organisation. We make up the question which all begin with the phrase “In which book…”. There are 20 questions total we run the first ten then rest and have a Kahoot quiz then the results go up and then we run the final ten questions. I always have three tie-breaker questions as well.

BOB is fun and an annual event in our school for grades 3 and 4 and also grades 5 and 6.

Our wonderful designer Begum and me showing off our latest BOB poster

Mothers and families grow readers for life

Posted on May 17, 2018 by abond

My colleague reading with her 5-year-old son at home

Reading mothers – a workshop my colleague Dina attended last week had us chatting this morning before work. This workshop was presented by some Russian colleagues, Tatiana Zhukova and Larissa Valulina, who quoted some Russian research showing that when the mothers read for pleasure themselves in the home, their children are more likely to read for pleasure as well. These librarians modelled a programme they had seen in Shanghai where mothers came into the library to read to small groups. The outcome of this was an increase in borrowing throughout the primary school.

Researcher Margaret Marga encourages parents to read to their children even beyond the age when they can read for themselves. “We should continue reading with our children until they no longer wish to share reading with us, ensuring that these experiences are enjoyable, as they can influence children’s future attitudes toward reading, as well as building their confidence and competence as readers. It is worth the effort to find time to share this experience with our children in the early years and beyond,” (2017). She lists the benefits of reading with your children as:
* facilitating enriched language exposure
* fostering the development of listening skills, spelling, reading comprehension and vocabulary
* establishing essential foundational literacy skills
* foster positive attitudes toward reading.

My older son reading to my younger son

I attended a workshop at the same time run by a colleague from Croatia, Anamarija Dujmovic, and one of their strategies was to create backpacks with about 10 books in for the whole family. The students could check out the bag and all its contents for four weeks. Inside there were books for the parents, adult fiction and parenting books, books for younger children and picture books. research has been conducted on the reading environment in the home and the impact it has on student’s reading behaviours. “The data seemed to demonstrate that positive reading environment highly persuaded students to cultivate good reading habits in themselves. For instance, parents who are avid readers themselves will normally nurture positive attitudes to reading as much as possible in their children,” (Morni & Sahari, 2013, p. 422). Developing a home library with a range of materials was one of the recommendations from this study, (Morni & Sahari, 2013, p. 423). This can be very challenging when you are not in your home country. Our school library has the opportunity to proactively encourage families to develop their own environment of home reading.

Dina and I have really enjoyed our “Friends of the library” programme and would like to expand it next year so that we give more to the mothers involved. We think these ideas might be useful. Plus we could try to run a book club. So far to date, our friends of the library friendship has been the Mum’s volunteering to help us out. This might be a great way to help them.

References

Merga, M. K. (2017, August 27). Research shows the importance of parents reading with children – even after children can read. Retrieved May 17, 2018, from The Conversation – website: http://theconversation.com/research-shows-the-importance-of-parents-reading-with-children-even-after-children-can-read-82756

Morni, A., & Sahari, S. (2013). The impact of living environment on reading attitudes [PDF]. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 101, 415-425. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042813021101

Literature across the curriculum – initial thoughts

Posted on November 16, 2014 by abond

In my first year teaching, many years ago, I worked at Rutherford High School in New Zealand. One of the subjects I taught was called Humanities – that was a posh name for ‘Social Studies’. I particularly loved the curriculum they had then at Rutherford High. Each unit had about four or five novels (with multiple copies of the titles) linked with it. One unit was on Industrialism and there were some great novels linked with it set in Victorian times showing the impact of this phenomena on society through story. The students were expected to read at least one of the associated novels, more if they wanted to. They kept a reading log and were invited to complete a reading response. I found this way of teaching a particular period or concept in the Humanities curriculum very empowering. The students not only had the opportunity to learn facts, skills and concepts linked with Social sciences they had them come alive in their imaginations as they read story. When I saw the title of this course I immediately though of that curriculum and the success I felt it had for my student’s learning.

Many years later I am working in a school that runs all three programmes of the International Baccalaureate. The Primary Years Programme which is for children age 3 – 12 is Inquiry based and in my role as librarian I bring literature links to the units of Inquiry as well as Information literacy links. Our students come from a range of cultures and backgrounds and many of them have English as their second language. We use picture books and stories to proved links with curriculum. This often also helps students develop vocabulary and concepts around the unit. An example of this is our students in Prep (age 5) were Inquiry into water. We used the story Rain School by James Rumford to show how rain can be destructive in some communities. The story is set in Chad and the children have to make their school from mud bricks. Their first lessons are how to build the school. They then learn how to read and write over the next few months until the end of the school year. Then the rains come and wash away the entire school building. This really captures their imaginations and we begin to use vocabulary like floods, monsoon, and develop some of the degrees of rain as well, showers, deluge and so on.

I am hoping that this course will enable me to understand the value of literature for children’s learning and develop strategies to help my colleagues at Istanbul International Community school to integrate literature in their curriculum areas.

References

Rumford, J. (2010). Rain School. Retrieved November 16, 2014, from James Rumford website: http://jamesrumford.com/jamesrumford.com/Rain_School.html

Rumford, J. (2010). Rain school. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.