Session 1 - Summary (7/11/17)

The introductory session was successful as we familiarised ourselves with the library resources and the school as a whole. We also had a fascinating assembly from Nick Sharratt who is a famous illustrator.

Nick Sharratt's Assembly 

In the assembly Nick Sharratt talked about how he finds drawing and writing fun and interesting, but also shared with the children that it took him a lot longer to be able to write well than it did for him to be able to draw well. This was a reassuring thing for the children as it meant that they knew that they do not have to be amazing at something straight away.

Sharratt also promoted many of his books, such as 'Shark in the Park', and engaged the children by acting out his poems and stories, we felt that this was a great way to include children in reading and to really gain their interest. All of the students in the assembly were joining in and seemed excited about reading, including the boys. This showed us that making reading interactive and inclusive could be a key way to make boys excited about reading from an early age (REFERENCE?). This in turn could then help to start tackling the gender gap at St Mary's. 

After the Nick Sharratt assembly, we then had time to go to the library and look through the books that are available for the children to read and how the library is organised. 

(Sharratt, 2000)

We learnt that they have a colour coded system for the children to follow so that they pick the right books for their reading level.

Level 1- Red- Lots of pictures/short texts
Level 2- Yellow- Short chapters and a few pictures
Level 3- Green- Long chapters
Level 4- Blue- Anything- Imagination

Over break we stayed in the Library to read with the pupils that came in and asked them about the books that they enjoyed reading and why they enjoyed it. We also gave out some questionnaires to find out more about their reading habits. The Library was very busy over the break, however a contributing factor to this could have been the fact it was 'wet play'. 

We also had a very interesting discussion with one of the Key Stage 2 teachers regarding the library and the gender gap at St Mary's. She spoke about how fast the library was put together out of nothing as the school realised the need for a central place to promote reading within. She also told us how excited she was to hear our ideas and explained how she promoted reading and how she designed her reading corner in her classroom.

The analysis of our questionnaire shows us that the St Mary's pupils are interested in reading and read a large amount. From our sample of the break time students and the Year 5 class that visited the library for their weekly session shows that 41% of them reading 1-3 books  a month, 33% read 4-6 and 26% read more than 6 books a week. This shows the students have the availability to read a wide range of books each month and organise time for reading. A large proportion of the students (82%) read at home, in class and in the library. This is evidence that the library is used by students and improving the library will be a useful aspect to raising the achievement of boys reading levels. At the moment 9% of students visit the library once a month we hope to raise this number to encourage them to visit it at least once a week. 

At the end of the session we had a conversation with Issac to evaluate how the session went and what he wanted us to do next week. From this conversation we realised that Issac was very eager for us to get started on the display and this was really what he wanted us to focus one. This meant that we needed to change our plan for session two to include time to start the design of the display. 

OVERALL REFLECTION OF SESSION ONE:

Session one did not go how we planned for it to go, we were not made aware of the times before our first session so what we had planned we had to slightly adjust to the timetable. Before our first session we had sent Isaac a plan of what we had as ideas for our 5 sessions, we wanted to make sure it fitted in with his timetable too, but he did not reply so we had to make sure we were adaptable in our plans.

However, Session 1 went well, as we were able to get to sit in on the key stage 1 assembly with Nick Sharratt in which he read the children some of his work and drew them some drawing with some children getting involved.

The library sessions that we had overall went well as we got to go around and introduce ourselves and get to know the children from both groups.

Some improvements for ourselves if we were to do this again would probably be to have planned out our sessions and what we had for ideas and emailed Isaac a few weeks before.

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/615346.Shark_In_The_Park)