We dedicated November of this school year to books and reading. Our plan was to run, throughout the month, a series of activities and events designed to awaken the children's interest in reading.
The purpose is clear: developing imagination and creativity, enriching vocabulary and encouraging free expression. These are more closely linked than they appear — a child who has read a great deal simply has more words at hand when they want to say something, and whoever has the words speaks more easily and writes better. No composition exercise can replace that reserve.
Today we ran a contest, and the children showed enormous interest. The contest format has a well-considered role: at this age reading often slips into the category of obligations, and a game with something at stake takes it out of there for a few days. A child reading in order to answer a question forgets they are reading for school.
What we are really after is an environment in which a love of books forms by itself: books within reach, time in which to open them, and classmates who talk about what they have read. The rest follows on its own.
About the after-school programme: https://pluskids.ro/en/after-school