It begins with the realisation that those straight and squiggly lines have some meaning.
The child then begins to decode the meaning of each squiggle. He can now understand that the sounds that he uses while talking correspond to a special symbol.
As he journeys deeper into the wonderland of reading, he learns to string the sounds and squiggles to make words which have meaning.
With stars in his eyes, he discovers that he can read!
He can read words!
He can read a series of words put together!
He can understand what all those wonderful words are trying to tell him!
This journey from squiggle to understanding to creating one’s own story has the potential to become a journey of love and reverence or a tedious task and a burden depending on how the child is exposed to it.
We want to make sure reading and writing become a lifelong passion for our students. For that:
- We’ve introduced DEAR Time for our Juniors and Seniors during Circle time during which students and teachers all sit down with a book to read quietly.
- The students are taking home a book in their library folder every weekend. They look forward to Friday to see which book they will get this time in their library folder. Of course, the child’s preference is also taken into account.
- The Reading Day program with parents is running successfully with parents coming to read for pleasure with their children. We see parents just as enthusiastic about reading as the little ones.
- The Reading Competition in Juniors and Seniors motivated the students to read. It was very difficult for our judges to crown the Reader of the Year. A tie-breaker round decided the winner in Seniors while the Junior winner won by a mere half point!
- The love for reading has now begun to translate into creating picture stories by Juniors while the Seniors have embarked on a simultaneous journey of using words and sentences with invented spelling to write their own stories. Being able to read their story during assembly provides extrinsic motivation to the children to continue writing.
- Story writing has become so popular in the Seniors that now we have to limit them to one turn per week for reading during assembly! Some of the passionate writers have also become proficient in creating a mind map, others can join together two sentences with and and but, and still others can write stories with a beginning, middle and end. The children are already displaying a glimpse of their own unique writing styles.
- We wish the children all the best in their reading and writing. They have their eyes on the stars! For us, they are the stars!
