In support of their inquiries about celebrations ("People celebrate special events") under the transdisciplinary theme of How We Express Ourselves, I shared with our PK1 students a special celebration from Germany last week. 

The first day of (Primary) school is a big event for children in Germany and has therefore been celebrated in a special way for many generations (actually as far back as the early 19th century). I still remember my first day of school even though it is quite a while back ;) also thanks to my parents who captured the occasion in pictures. So I told our PK1 students how I got to wear a special dress, received flowers, had a special lunch with my favourite food, and - this is what our students were most curious about - received a Schultuete​ ("school cone").

They wondered what might be inside and were surprised to discover that it was quite heavy. They guessed that the cone might contain carrots, toys, candy - or maybe also "things that you need for school"?

There was much excitement as the first items were pulled from the Schultuete: a notebook, a pencil, a sharpener, an eraser...

... and gummy bears! Yes, originally, the cone was filled only with sweets, to "sweeten" the first day of school, which often caused quite a bit of anxiety among the children, as it was usually the first time they were away from home and without their parents.

As we compared the way the first day of school is celebrated in Germany with the way we celebrate the Lunar New Year here in Hong Kong, our young inquirers noticed that for both celebrations people wear special outfits, eat special food, and the children receive gifts.

I always enjoy sharing the way we mark this special event for children in Germany, having fond memories of my own, my siblings' as well as my daughter's first day of school. Further, it allows me to show our young inquirers how we can learn from people who are knowledgeable about a particular topic - in addition to learning from books and websites.

Further, our PK1 students also continue to enjoy their check out time (and I especially like seeing them putting much thought into their choices and sharing their books with each other) and Mandarin story time.

Happy New Year! Happy Year of the Pig! May all your wishes for this new year come true!

I hope you all had a wonderful Lunar New Year break, enjoying quality time with family and friends, time to rest, relax, and read. I always appreciate the slower pace of a break, the extra time I get to enjoy with my family, and lots of uninterrupted reading time. Also during this past break as you can see in the picture collage below, I came across and enjoyed some wonderful books - some written for children, some for young adults, some for grown ups; most I enjoyed reading in print, one in the form of an audiobook. Since I started to keep track of and share my reading also through Instagram (if you would like to explore and/or follow my account, click on this link), I love being reminded of when and where I read a particular book, who might have been with me at the time. It has been a wonderful week, with many beautiful new memories made - and I hope you feel the same way about your past week too.

I am wishing you a great start back into regular school and work life and quickly wanted to remind you of important ongoing/upcoming events - I will of course share more over the next weeks and keep you posted.

Today, we joined readers around the world to mark World Read Aloud Day which is already celebrated for the tenth time, having more and more readers join each year. It is a wonderful opportunity to make extra time to enjoy a read-aloud together, while spreading awareness that literacy is a human right, yet still millions of people around the world are not able to read and write. For our students and all of us, it is a good reminder of how fortunate we are to learn/have learnt literacy skills and to have such beautiful libraries at our school.

While we celebrate reading every day throughout the year as one of my students pointed out, today we made some extra read-aloud time. Some classes, like our kindergarteners, prepared ahead of time, choosing some favourites to be read by their teachers - as you can see from the tweet below. I loved hearing that some HKA families have also made special read-aloud plans for later in the day, outside of school. It shows once again what a great community of readers we are.

World Read Aloud Day was not the only special event today. We celebrated reading further by launching our annual read-a-thon which will run through March 8, 2019. With the read-a-thon, which is a longstanding tradition at HKA, we spread our love for reading beyond our community by raising money in support of Bring Me a Book Hong Kong (BMABHK). BMABHK promotes family literacy around Hong Kong, providing access to quality literature to children. Just a couple of weeks ago, through BMABHK we made a book donation to a local primary school and our fourth graders shared read-alouds with the students there as part of the donation ceremony. (You can read more about it here.)

In case you are new to the read-a-thon, here is how it works (our fourth graders visited each classroom last week to explain it to their fellow primary students)
​

• Students ask family members / friends to sponsor their reading time.
• Then they write down the number of minutes they read each time this month.
• At the end of the read-a-thon, students calculate the total number of minutes read and collect the promised money from their sponsors.
• Students bring the money raised in form of a single cheque to our libraries.
• We hand over the total amount to Bring Me a Book Hong Kong.
• We participate in the installation of book case libraries and book donations organised by BMABHK.​

(Hard copies of the respective forms were sent home today. We also shared them earlier this week in electronic format with all parents.)

Have a lovely Lunar New Year Break!

Since returning from winter break, our second graders have been enjoying listening to read-alouds of books by Ying Chang Compestine. Stories such as Boy Dumpling, The Chinese Emperor's New Clothes and The Runaway Wok made our students identify certain elements that seem to characterise the author's creative work: Chinese themes, food, humour, an author's note and a recipe at the end of the book. Listening to the stories has also generated a number of questions, as for example how long it takes the author to make one of her books, how old she was when she started making books, which of the books she has written her favourite is, and whether she comes up with the recipes herself.

This past week in order to find answers to our questions, we spent some time exploring the author's website (here is the link as many of our students were keen on doing more exploring at home). Our second graders excitedly shared what they discovered, such as for example that the author had her first article published in a magazine when she was in grade school in Wuhan, that she enjoys writing about Chinese themes as it keeps her close to her home country China, that she likes making up recipes, that she gets ideas for her stories amongst others when doing tai chi and going on walks, and that she loves to loose herself in a book.

Particular excitement was caused by the discovery that the website also showed pictures from the author's visit to HKA a couple of years ago.

In addition to inquiring about a new author, our second graders have also continued to enjoy their check out time. It is wonderful seeing how much thought they put into the selection process, how many recommendations are made within the classes, and how eager our students are to get right into their books. 

This week, we will be missing our youngest readers and inquirers from PK1 and PK2 in the library due to the closure of schools for this age group around Hong Kong. We hope that you will be able to make the most of this gift of time, enjoying some extra reading time together too. Below are the authors whose creative works our PK1 and PK2 students have been exploring lately. Maybe you have the opportunity to find and read together some of these books during the week - the public libraries might have some of these or you could check on Tumble Books, an e-library we are subscribing to (if you are not sure about username and password, just email me).

Our PK1 students have been enjoying books by Roseanne Thong. This is the first series of books we are reading together this year which were made by an author/illustrator team (other books we had read together so far were created by one person, taking on the role of both author and illustrator). The books we have so far read together by Roseanne Thong were all illustrated by Grace Lin. The bright and vibrant colors and patterns make the stories even more engaging for our young readers. They also love that there is so much to explore and discover in the illustrations - patterns, shapes, colours and numbers. Further, the Asian themes of the books encourage our students to make connections to their own lives. 

Our PK2 students have also been enjoying books with Asian themes - beautiful picture book stories written and illustrated by Grace Lin. Our young readers and inquirers not only enjoyed the read-alouds but also spending time exploring the books with a peer and sharing some of what they noticed; for example that the books are about Chinese food, Chinese people, and Chinese celebrations. They also commented on the bright colours of the illustrations and the stories being short and happy.

In addition to reading some of Grace Lin's books, you might also enjoy exploring her website with your child as there are some activities and recipes provided.

​Happy Reading!

Our first graders recently embarked on a new author / illustrator inquiry, exploring the creative work of Anthony Browne. During a book browse - fortunately, we have a wonderful selection of his books in our library - there was much excitement and interest for his books right away. Students noticed the detailed illustrations that dominate the stories, some hidden clues and patterns in some of these, an element of humour, and many animal characters, in particular monkeys and gorillas. ​And as noticing often leads to wonderings, our students began to ask lots of questions: how long Anthony Browne had been making books, how many books he had already made, what kinds of books he makes and how he comes up with the idea for them, for example.

This past week, through our read-aloud, students were introduced to the shape game. You might have heard your first grade talk about it at home, or even given it a try already. If not, all you need to play the game is paper and two pens, each a different colour. The first player will draw a shape, then the second player will complete the shape, turning it into whatever he or she sees in it.

We tried this out during our class times and students loved it! It was pretty impressive to see with how much ease they created pictures, all the images they saw in just a simple shape.

As part of this, I shared with  students that Anthony Browne has been playing the shape game since his childhood, which made us wonder whether this might have had an influence on the kind of illustrator and author he became. Our first grader think definitely yes - they think it has given him lots of practice to imagine and to draw.

As always, the most exciting part for me to see during this inquiry, is the interest that has already been generated for his books, one of the main goals of our author inquiries. Further, our students are practicing their inquiry skills and considering the author/illustrator's way to tell his stories for their own bookmaking.

This past week, our students in grades 3-5 spent time reflecting on who they are as readers at this point of the school year, to then identify an area to grow as readers in the second semester. It is important for us to give students time to think and talk about who they are as readers, uncovering and then furthering their reading identity. We do this by providing students with their check out history of the first semester and some sentence starters/prompts to reflect on what they see in the data once transferred into a bar graph. Of course, what they select from our library does often not cover their entire reading as many also read books from their home or the public library; but it provides valuable insights and general trends that are helpful in making them aware of their identify as readers to then set goals on how to move forward.

Many of our students expressed surprise at some of the observations they made and shared this in lively conversations with each other and us teachers; for example, discovering that they had read considerably more (or less) than they had thought; noticing the complete absence of particular genres in their book selection; as well as identifying changes to past trends in particular with regard to the amount of books checked out. It was interesting that few students were surprised to see what their reading preferences were, having a good idea about what they enjoy the most in books (when it comes to genre and format).

Among the most frequently mentioned areas students wish to grow in are making more time to read to increase the number of books they get to read and including a wider variety of genres in their selection. Over the weeks to come, we will look at what some of the barriers to achieving these goals might be - maybe making time to read outside of school or finding books they enjoy - and how we can eliminate or overcome these barriers. It will require as to look closer at our reading habits and how we might change the ones that interfere with our goals. We will also look at and/or revisit strategies that can be helpful, such as how to find books of interest in our library, how to share our reading with each other and how to make reading plans. In addition, we will of course keep introducing authors, titles and series.

In addition to the read-alouds and conversations about reading wishes, students had much opportunity to look for and check out books. It seemed that after the break, everybody was ready and extra excited to get new books. 

Generally, it seemed that everyone was keen on taking first steps towards making their wishes for reading come true this year, as they recommended books to one another, looked in different areas of the library than just where their preferred books are, and got right into reading after check out.

An exciting start to the year!

Time has flown by and we suddenly find ourselves at the end of winter break and in a new year, 2019. I hope you all had a wonderful time relaxing and re-energising, and are ready for this brand new year. May it bring only the very best for you and your families!

As you can see in the collages embedded in this post, I enjoyed time with my family visiting beautiful Japan and reading lots of wonderful books (picture books, novels for the middle grades, young adults and grown ups). I look very much forward seeing our students this week and hearing all about their winter break (reading) adventures. As we always do at the start of a new year, we will be reflecting about the past year and thinking about wishes where we might want our reading journey to take us during 2019. Whatever these individual wishes might look like, I hope they will involve lots of reading time and wonderful new books.

Reading has so many benefits - besides of course being one of the most magical endeavours ever - and we can't remind ourselves often enough about them. Just recently, I received a beautiful infographic from Penguin Random House summarising some of the big benefits of reading:

COGNITIVE 

• Improves memory
• Lengthens life
• Makes you smarter

PHYSICAL

• Relieves stress and lowers blood pressure
• Improves sleep

EMOTIONAL

• Makes you more empathetic.

I hope you will enjoy lots of wonderful books this year.

​Happy Reading!

If you are new to HKA this year, you might not have heard yet about a long-standing tradition at our school: the read-a-thon. Each year, our students share their love for reading through a sponsored reading initiative in support of Bring Me a Book Hong Kong (BMABHK). Bring Me a Book Hong Kong is a local NGO, aiming to promote family literacy and providing access to quality children's literature to communities across Hong Kong. Over the past couple of years, we have donated book case libraries to various nursery and primary schools, the last one during the past summer to the Po Leung Kuk Wong Siu Ching Kindergarten-Cum-Nursery, Won Tai Sin (70% of the children attending this nursery school are from low-income families).

Last Friday, we visited with our fourth graders Sung Tsun Catholic School (Primary Division), here in Sai Kung, to replenish their book case library (which we donated two years ago) with 125 additional brand-new picture books.

Our students did not just share their love for reading through the book donation but also by reading aloud to groups of 6-year-olds from the school. It was beautiful watching our fourth graders read so confidently and clearly entertaining their young audiences. 

At the end of the read-aloud session, we all got together for a group photo and received each a gift - a bookmark with a personalised thank you message.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who helped: students and sponsors of the 2018 read-a-thon, our g4 students and teachers supporting us in organising the read-a-thon, the Bring Me a Book Team preparing the books and ceremony and the Sung Tsun Catholic School vice-principal, teachers and students who received us so warmly.

(In case you are wondering, the next read-a-thon is coming soon, in connection with our Literacy Week 2019 in March. Stay tuned!)