During my first year of Practicum in CEIP Cristobal Colón the students had a small library in each classroom, it was a surprise for me taking into account that in the school there is a library already but when I asked my tutor about it she told me that the “big” library was mainly used by teachers so they decided to make a small place with books for children in each classroom. That space was mainly used when someone finished an activity really quickly or there are only few minutes until the class will finish, then they could take a book they want and read it. In my class the students also had a reading hour on Fridays but on those hours instead using the library they had in class, all the pupils were reading the same book and after that they were doing different activities about the pages they read.

During my second year of Practicum in Gredos San Diego the way of using the books was a real surprise for me, they didn’t had a classroom library but instead of that, each one of the students had to bring everyday a book he/she likes to the school, the curious thing was that they used to read every day after the break for ten minutes, in order to calm down and get the perfect mood to start with the class, this technique got so popular in the class that my teacher used it also when she considered that the students are not focused enough, or if the class before was Physical Education and the pupils were nervous. In Gredos San Diego there was also a reading class and it was on Fridays. But it was a little bit different, because as in Cristobal Colón that reading class was just reading and doing activities, in Gredos it was more than that, after reading we were discussing, and asking open questions to the children, also making competitions in groups with questions in order to make it more active and cooperative.

In my personal opinion I have to say that in the first school (CEIP Cristobal Colón) the activities were not developed to motivate the student but only to check if they comprehend the stories, but a good point is that they had a small library with appropriate books in each class. In fact in the second school (Gredos San Diego) they hadn’t the library but the activities of the reading classes were done to motivate the students to keep reading.