Promotion of Reading: A WholeSchool Approach

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Promotion of Reading A Whole-School Approach

• Maria Ng
• Ronica Chan
• Carmel Secondary School

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Outline

• whole-school approach
• integration of extensive reading into ELT
  curriculum
• - salient factors
• - impact on learning Jazzy
• home-school cooperation
• feedback

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Background

• an EMI school
• lower Band 1 intake
• students
• - mostly from working-class families
• - little English language support at home
• - lack exposure to English in everyday life

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Whole-School Promotion of Reading

• Past the job of language panels
• Now the job of all panels, librarians,
  students, parents PTA
• Theme 2000-2002
• "Broaden Horizons - Be Active Readers"

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Whole-school Promotion of Reading

• reading schemes for students and parents
• book exhibitions
• seminars and workshops on reading conducted by
  teachers or local writers
• visits to public libraries
• reading camps
• reading-related competitions
• publication of a newsletter on reading "Books
  for Keeps"

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"Ten Thousand and Beyond" Reading Competition

• Competition
• individual class awards
• Collective Effort
• the target of 10,000 books

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Parent-Child Reading Scheme (organized by PTA
school library)

• a student family ? a log book
• student ? ? parent share reading orally
• log book date, book title and a grade
  (interest level), parent's/students
  signature

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(No Transcript)
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Books for Keeps

• Teachers, students, even caretakers
  contribute
• Teachers as readers role models
• Students as readers resource persons

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School Library

• provides a comfortable reading area
• organizes reading schemes reading-related
  activities
• promotes reading to parents
• stocks books for students and parents
• arranges visits to book stores

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Student Empowerment

• as student librarians
• as resource persons Books for Keeps
• select recommend books for purchase
• "The selected books are screened by teachers,
  but the school usually buys the books we
  recommend because we know what other students
  want to read. (Gigi, an S.5 student)

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Effectiveness average number of library books
checked out per day
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Integration of Extensive Reading into the ELT
Curriculum

• Formal Curriculum
• - ERS lessons
• - Project work on reading habits
• - Class readers
• - Home reading
• Informal Curriculum
• - Story-sharing corner

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Salient factors

• teacher-student/ student-student dialogue
  sharing stories orally in writing
• integration of reading writing home reading
• meaning-making
• exploration of language use

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student-student dialogue story-sharing corner

• Story-sharing is "interaction of ideas between
  students of different forms." (Gloria, S.2)
• "I prefer students to share their story with us,
  rather than reading from a script. There should
  be some interaction."(Vicky, peer-tutor, S.3)
• "I ask them to share the story, not just open the
  book and tell us what it is about." (Kaiser,
  peer-tutor, S.3)
• Student Empowerment

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teacher-student dialogue home reading

• Jazzys home reading entry dated 25 November 1998

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1st March, 1999
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Meaning-making

• "When I was a story-teller in S.1, I felt
  nervous. I was afraid of making mistakes. I
  didn't know how to translate my thoughts from
  Chinese into English. I then tried to speak,
  disregarding the mistakes I made...I gained more
  confidence, and I became a peer-tutor in S.3.
  (Jennifer, S.5)
• "I learned to be less shy. I had to speak clearly
  in order to make others understand me. This also
  helped my oral skills." (Catherine, S.2)

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Meaning-making

• 28th Dec,
• 1998

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Exploration of Language Use

• "Usually we don't have much chance to read out
  the vocabulary we have just learnt, but the
  story-sharing corner provides a place for us to
  try out the new vocabulary we've learnt and
  consolidates our knowledge of new words." (May,
  S.3)

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Exploration of Language Use

• 17th Nov, 1999

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• Impact on Learning Jazzy
• Home-School Cooperation

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Concluding remarks

• Reading culture develops over time
• Schools can
• - create opportunities for it to develop
• - encourage students to interact not only with
  a text, but with one another about a text
• - integrate reading with writing (see also
  Exemplar 5)
• - explore, experiment, evaluate ? excel (4Es)