Hello everybody!
Today I am going to talk about the first seminar we had last Monday. During this session we have been talking in pairs about some of our experiences with books, things like our first memories when we weren’t able to read yet, which was our favorite book when we were children or which is the book or the books that have influenced our lives. After talking about this with our pair, we share this personal information with the rest of the classmates. I have to say that I really loved this sharing part, I think you can know a lot of things about a person by knowing what he or she reads or if he or she likes to read or not.
One thing I realized is that, some of us, agreed in one part of our experience. We didn´t like reading in school or high-school cause we had this feeling of doing it cause you had to make a summary and just because you had to read at least an specific number of books. I think this is terrible; of course it is very important for children to read but we can´t just pick a book and forced them to read it and expect they like it. We must look for books close to them; find something which they can feel identified with and try to avoid summaries or things like that cause in my opinion that it’s when we start thinking that reading is homework and for that reason we don’t enjoy doing it.
Finally, I have to say I loved this session because it made me reflect a lot about my experiences reading during my whole life. I have never thought about it but the truth is that books have influenced my life more than I thought. I have noticed this, because I have been doing my reading map, that we will be presenting in class next Tuesday, and I have realized how much have change my tastes when I’m going to pick a book of the library now.
I invite everyone to stop for a moment and start reflecting a bit about your own personal experiences reading.
Hello Helen! I definitely agree with you. Reading books is something essential for children at this age. However, when they have to read compulsory and specific books, as if it were a homework assignment, they quickly lose their interest in books. In this way, they do not learn the real meaning of books as something you do for pleasure in your free time, and it is really a pity.
We, as teachers, should look for a way of motivating them to read in their leisure time, for pleasure and being engage in the story. They must be aware that they are learning at the same time they are having a fun time. But, how can we find a balance between these two aspects? For many of them, anything that they do at school is boring and finally they get tired of it.
As you say, I consider it could be a good idea to motivate and engage pupils to read the books they are personally interested in. We can also organize programs of reading awakening or games related to reading, such as gymkhana or trivial. Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, it is something we must work on with our pupils at schools.
Bye bye!