As I posted here a couple of days ago, besides my senior students, my vocational students have also been invited to allocate some time to reading (but in class, with me ;)), in other words, every friday and for about half an hour, they would read either the book they had chosen and brought into class or any of the ones I already had in store in case they "forgot" theirs.
Have I been successful? I would say yes, but I won't lie; I have no illusions and again and again as teachers we face the same situations: not all have managed to finish the books they started... either they were absent from class, involved in different activities or... they simply "forgot" it! Whenever that happened, I would show them some others and they would pick one to read - they would start a different book without ever finishing it. Others though have read more than one - some more slowly, others a bit faster - and one of the students accomplished the feat of reading 5 books. For these classes and for the time we had, it's not bad, believe me!
Let me show you how it was in a clear and simple way:
Now have a look at them reading:
Yet let me tell you the following before finishing this blogpost: no student ever thought I would make use of the collected data much less that I would award anything because I didn't want it to work as a kind of bribery: I challenged them to read for pleasure and not expecting any kind of reward though in the end I felt I should praise those who had read more books / pages.
And here is our winner, Sónia
Hope you all keep on reading, if not the traditional printed word, Gutenberg's precious heritage, then online magazines, newspapers and ebooks.
Never stop, never give up! Wish you all the best, folks!
Teacher Alex
