Our new Booked for Life program aims to develop lifelong reading habits in our younger students, focusing on helping our Years 2 to 4 students to become confident and well read as they transition from learning to read to ‘reading to learn’.
Booked for Life started this year, with teachers noting immediate interest and excitement amongst students around selecting their Booked for Life books and sharing their book experiences with classmates. The program aims to cultivate a genuine love of reading, and relies in part on building strong partnerships between school and parents.
Students have a recommended level of support based on their reading status, which could mean they read to parents, parents read to them, or they read independently. Their Booked for Life book might be the focus of their home reading, or it might supplement other reading.
Teachers schedule time in class on most days to read and share the Booked for Life books. Students are encouraged to mark with a bookmark passages they have particularly enjoyed and share them with their classmates.
Students also participate in book tastings (book reviews) and literature circles, which spark their interest in new books, and encourage them to try books outside their ‘usual’ genre. A new generation is discovering some of the world’s most famous and best-loved authors, from Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton to Dav Pilkey and Jeff Kinney, and sharing their enthusiasm for reading with their friends, classmates, teachers and parents.