"The more that you read, the more you will know. The more that you read, the more places you'll go." - Dr. Seuss
Pleasant greetings to the amazing people of the Hive! Hello, How are you today? I hope you are all fine and safe. It's my first time posting here in the Education Community. And today's blog is all about the activities we've accomplished aimed at igniting students' love of reading. Since we just concluded the Reading Month celebration last week, I would be sharing with you some of the activities we conducted.
Reading is a vital skill to be learned wholeheartedly by every learner and is considered the basic building block of learning. It is an important lifelong skill that sharpens the mind and improves memory. It also widens one vocabulary which is a significant gain for better understanding and comprehension.
Reading in school has long been lamented even before the pandemic hits the country. Students read only for compliance and not for the love to read anymore, especially in this digital era. Books are often neglected and it seemed that their importance has long been forgotten.
Another alarming concern in schools is a quite number of struggling to non readers recorded for the last two years. Modular Printed Distance learning delivery during the pandemic is one of the alleged reasons for this to happen. As face-to-face classes came back alive, reading and comprehension among students have been the primary concerns of teachers across curricula. Sad but true!😭
However, the school and the teachers are doing their best they could to address this concern. All the ways and means were given the utmost attention to somehow ignite students' love of reading. And our school is one of those. Just recently we celebrated Reading month and we had a lot of FUN while getting on track in reading, not so much digitally but with books and other printed materials.
THE BANNER-MAKING 🏳️🥰
My Grade 7 class participated in the banner-making activity as we open the month-long celebration.
The activity was on the spot and the students were given one hour to finish the banner. So my students gathered their materials and work together to finish their banners on time.
It was time pressured but a fun time with classmates indeed.
THE MAKING OF THE READING PANTRY 📚💞🎈
Reading Pantry is important to provide each student the opportunity to access available learning resources in the school, especially those who have no gadgets wherein e-books are widely available. This is also beneficial to schools that have not yet established the best functional library like our school (lack of rooms is one of the reasons).
Our class is enthusiastic about reading pantries so we decided to make one for our classroom 🥰.
We enjoyed the whole process so much while making our reading pantry. I have to bring my available books from home, too, (I want my students to enjoy other books rather than the textbooks they used every day.) Each one had contributed something. Some were busy setting up the balloons, cutting out letters, making cute flowers out of colored papers, and more. It was indeed a productive and enjoyable day.
Tadaaaah! Presenting our humble Class Reading Pantry of my Grade 7😍🤗
STORY READING AND STORYTELLING 📖
We often integrate reading stories and storytelling in our English class. However, it was sometimes unappreciated because, in English and Language subjects, the focus is more on the integration of both literature and grammar. For a day, my students and I devoted our one-hour class just to reading stories and storytelling.
THE READER'S THEATER ACTIVITY 🤩
One of the weekly activities we had was the Reader's Theater Contest. As we all know, reader's theater is sometimes called dramatic reading where students read- aloud through a script without the need for props, costumes, scenery, or setting. This activity is one of the strategies for developing students' reading fluency.
My students got excited when I informed them that we were going to participate in the contest. Many volunteered however, the number of participants depends on the number of characters in the reading piece and yes, we needed 14 participants!
It was indeed a worthwhile experience for my students. Their voice dramatization skills had been tested 😅. And guess what? We won third place (amazing, right?). Not bad for a 7th grader competing with higher grade levels.🥰 And I am a happy, proud, and grateful coach/ teacher, too. 😂😅🥰
That's all for today dear Hive friends! I am hoping that you enjoyed this blog and somehow remember your same experience back then 😂. Thank you so much for your continued love of reading my posts😅. If you find it worthy of a reblog, please do so. I will truly appreciate the effort. 🥰
See you at my next blog! Sending my best regards and my warmest big hugs.🥰💞🤗 God bless everyone and advance Happy Holidays!