World Book Day is this coming Friday!

At Hillside, children have ample opportunities to engage with all sorts of texts through weekly library sessions, accessing their classroom book baskets by themselves, learning in a print-rich environment, and through many other more structured learning engagements. As a PYP school, our children develop their reading skills alongside inquiry-based learning. Their innate curiosity and enthusiasm serves as the cornerstone for being self-motivated readers, as both fiction and non-fiction books helps them to acquire knowledge, develop empathy, and make sense of the world around them. 

The PYP believes:

Reading helps us to clarify our ideas, feelings, thoughts and opinions. Literature offers us a means of understanding ourselves and others, and has the power to influence and structure thinking. Children learn to read by reading. Writing is a way of expressing ourselves. It is a personal act that grows and develops with the individual. From the earliest lines and marks of young learners to the expression of mature writers, it allows us to organize and communicate thoughts, ideas and information in a visible and tangible way. Children learn to write by writing.

While we may think of reading as a conduit to writing, in K2, children's development in reading and writing often happens in parallel; their understanding of composition (i.e. ideas, vocabulary, sequence of plot, illustration) and convention (i.e. sentence structure, grammar, phonics) is developed simultaneously. Throughout the K2 year, some of the reading & writing goals include (but are not limited to):

• Demonstrate comprehension by responding to text
• Predict what might happen next when reading
• Discriminate between numbers, letters, and words
• Recognize familiar grapheme-phoneme correspondences 
• Use writing for specific purposes
• Use some signs and symbols in writing

Read on to learn how different K2 classes develop reading and writing as part of the language curriculum!

Gecko Class

After the daily Open Play hour, children engage in a period of "quiet reading", which isn't always so quiet for good reason! Some children choose books to read on their own, while others enjoy reading with their peers and teachers. This regular routine in the Gecko class encourages children to develop a love of reading, as well as to nurture a sense of curiosity and enthusiasm for both fiction and non-fiction books.

Oftentimes, children will ask us "Can you please read to me?" or even "I don't know how to read." Luckily, we know ALL children can read! For our emerging K2 readers who do not yet read words as we adults do, we can help them to independently "read the pictures"- which is to look at the pictures carefully, notice the setting and characters as clues to figure out what is happening in the story. The ability to read the pictures is crucial in supporting children to develop comprehension skills when they CAN read words later on.

In the above picture, it is Lauren and Hannah to the book rescue! As children mature in their book-handling skills, they are also able to fix ripped pages by themselves.

Tiger Class

"Quiet reading" time is also a regular daily routine in the Tiger class. When children are given the opportunity to choose books that interests them, they more readily make connections with what they read, and encourages them to be engaged, self-motivated readers. This is why classroom book baskets are intentionally curated to include a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books, including topics relating to the current unit of inquiry, as well as lots of books supporting social-emotional learning.

The "All About Me" book (pictured above) is a particularly popular one that the Tiger children like to read and re-read time after time. It includes every child's All About Me page, and encourages social interaction as children eagerly share their page with their peers. This very special book gives every child a strong sense of belonging and helps build a positive class community. 
*Fun fact* To align with sustainable classroom practices, the front and back book covers of All About Me is made with recycled cardboard!

Turtle Class

Having read lots of different types of books, the Turtle children have begun giving it a go themselves at bookmaking. This approach to writing is inspired by literacy coach Matt Glover (whom the ESF Early Years leadership engaged with this year). Bookmaking inspires children to be authors and writers, and to express themselves through mark-making, words, and illustrations. 

Children's own books can tell us a lot about how they generate ideas, how they connect different ideas and concepts together with flow, and eventually learning to support their illustrations with relevant labelling and words. The process is very exciting, and you can facilitate bookmaking at home too! Here are some tips from Matt Glover (5 min video) to get you started:

Dragon Class

The Dragon children have also been expressing themselves through bookmaking (see video above). Sometimes, children make books entirely from their own ideas; other times, Juliet provides some prompts that encourage children to diversify their learning and have a go at creating different types of books i.e. true stories taken from their personal experiences, "how-to" instructional books, etc.

During and after the process of bookmaking, teachers may engage in what is called "conferencing", which is simply to have a conversation with the child about their book, point out their strengths and consider new learning points. This could be adding more details to the illustrations, labelling with letters or words, or verbally elaborating a bit more when sharing their book with others. Here are a couple pages from books created by Sophie and Shai:

World Book Day

To celebrate World Book Day on 23 April (Friday), our K2 readers are invited to dress up as their favorite storybook character! They will participate in a book parade to share their costumes with other classes- no doubt this will be an event to remember! Laura, Suzie & Stripey made a story recording and talked about the upcoming World Book Day and parade. Feel free to watch it here:

Happy reading!