Gearing up for Book Week (2-6 March) with Globeducate Reads!

On Friday 2 February we celebrated Globeducate Reads, a day in which we encourage everyone to ‘Drop Everything and Read’. Traditionally, this is an hour dedicated to putting everything else aside - stress, worries, obligations, schedules - and simply spending that time with an enjoyable book to remember how much we love reading.

In practice, an hour can be a very long time for a four-year-old, and sometimes an hour also isn’t enough to show how much we can enjoy and value books. So at RIS we decided to put our own creative twist on it! Each class chose a book-related activity designed to get the students reading but also to celebrate all the different ways and places in which books can be enjoyed. In some cases, this meant enjoying books with younger or older students, sharing stories together:

Year 4 were our greatest risk-takers, practicing their presentation skills by building up the courage to read to our Middle and High School students in Year 9 and Year 10.

Year 9 Eve listening to Year 4K Michelle reading a book in Chinese - it’s important to support reading in all the languages that a child speaks!

Nursery experienced reading while ‘camping’ with their Year 4D counterparts in a cozy tent, reminding us that we can take books with us anywhere:

Year 2 adventured into the non-fiction section, choosing a book on science experiments and spending the afternoon following the instructions and turning the classroom into a laboratory:

All in all, everyone in Early Years and Elementary experienced at least one way (if not multiple!) to enjoy a book in a new light. To round out the day, we also hosted a Book Fair with Usborne Books, a British independent publishing house that produces high-quality fiction and non-fiction children’s books. 

Reading is a huge part of being a student at RIS, whether it involves learning new facts and information, or sharing the next new story that you’ve read with your friends. Globeducate Reads was therefore a fantastic opportunity to reflect on all the ways we can enjoy reading in our lives, and to get us geared up for our big Book Week celebrations 2-6 March! 

Ms K. Mentzelopoulos, PYP Librarian