Junior School
From the Head of Junior School
Book Week
This week we are celebrating the love of reading and the world of opportunities that books offer us. Each year since 1945, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has inspired the young, and young at heart, to immerse themselves into the wonder of books and stories. Whether reading for pleasure or purpose, or both, books are a true gift to us all.
Learning to read is arguably one of the most life changing skills anyone can develop.
Reading permeates through every facet of our lives from daily ‘to do’ lists and text messages, contracts and exams, to novels and stories. Even from our earliest age, when recognising written words is beyond our reach, having someone read to us is transformative. We connect through words, written and spoken. Sharing stories with others is one of the true joys of reading, but so is the quiet self-reflection of reading the right book at an appropriate moment to help shape the point in time you are in. I know that when I’m reading a brilliant book, my eyes glide across the page effortlessly and the story engulfs my thoughts. Today, there is an ever-increasing use of video to tell stories and convey messages, which absolutely has incredible value and is thoroughly engaging in its own way. The uniqueness of books and the written word though is the ability for the reader to co-create the world together with the author. I truly love when an author leaves enough space for us as individuals to form in our own minds how the story is pictured, and form opinions and feelings about characters in a way that helps us reflect on our own character. That is the power of self-discovery through books, and I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than to share that experience with our children.
This year's theme to Book Week – Dreaming with eyes open…stepping into your own story.
This theme invites us all to explore our backgrounds, interests and aspirations. Dream big dreams, connect with stories and let our imaginations loose. All throughout the week, classes have been reading together, sharing stories and their dreams.
The dream jars outside every classroom make for wonderful reading as you move from Pre-Kindergarten through to Year Six.
It's always a delight to see the development of thoughts and thinking of children from four-year-olds to twelve-year-olds in a snapshot like this. The culminating event of Book Week is the dress up parade on Friday, which we will need to share the photographs of in next week's Anchor, but I assure you it will be quite a spectacle as it always is. Students are invited to dress up as their favourite book character, or something they are dreaming of becoming in the future, or simply something they dream in…i.e. their pajamas – yes, we get to wear our PJ's at school for the whole day if we wish!
I will share with you an excerpt from an Anchor article I wrote last year about children learning to read, as it seem appropriate to revisit considering the celebration of reading this week.
Learning to read is a complex process, with 26 letter formations (graphemes) corresponding to 44 letter sounds (phonemes) to form words. In the early phases of reading, sounding out letters in consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words like ‘cat, sat, mat’ provides an entry point to forming simple sentences. Young readers develop their decoding skills and confidence at this stage before progressing to using digraphs (th, sh, ng) and trigraphs (igh, air, ear). It is common though for students to reach a point where words won’t always fit the patterns they have been learning, some words have been acquired from other languages for example, and this has the potential to cause confusion and occasionally some loss of confidence in spelling and reading. Please reassure your children, as we do, that this broader and deeper understanding of words develops with exposure to a variety of texts over time, the key is to keep reading.
In general though, to support your child’s reading development, please don’t underestimate the value of shared reading experiences and modelling reading as an adult. ‘I read, you read, we read’ approaches are perfect for sharing the reading experience with children; adults reading aloud to children is powerful well into their teenage years. Taking time for yourselves as adults to read for enjoyment, whatever the text type, has great value for children to see and relaxing for you too. Often these moments spark a conversation around particular topics that will deepen a child’s understanding for concepts, ideas and language.
BECOME Me
Also, on the topic of dreaming. Dreaming about our futures. Years Five and Six students are beginning to engage with a software platform called BECOME Me, a career education programme designed for Years Five through to Year Ten, to spark the initial interests about future career pathways.
BECOME Me lets students explore the world of careers based on their interests and curiosity. The underpinning premise of the programme is to equip students with knowledge and skills that take career related learning beyond simply helping students choose a post-school pathway; students discover educational relevance and the career management skills they'll need to thrive for their future of career choices.
Lessons and student exploration are delivered in three phases.
- AWARENESS
- ASPIRATION
- AGENCY
Awareness building as students explore careers options; Aspiration as they define goals and targets to explore further; Agency where students take action on a project to deepen their knowledge and understanding.
Lessons are aligned to Learning Areas across the curriculum. In each cycle of the programme, students design and implement an experiment that allows them to test out and refine ideas for their future. The programme allows each student to access their own profile on the BECOME Me web app.
We wish for all young people to be actively engaged in creating and living a life they want to live. BECOME Me provides students with the opportunity, tools and resources for students to deepen this thinking about their future in a positive way. This process boosts the relevance of school and encourages students to put their own 'why' into their education.
Big Sleep Out 2022
It's wonderful to see some of our students supporting this tremendously valuable event, both raising awareness and funds to help vulnerable members of our community. If you have the capacity to support these students in their efforts, and in doing so, others in our community, please make your contribution via this link: Little Hands for Tomorrow • Albany's BIG Sleep Out 2022 (raisely.com). Our sincere thanks for your donations and support, and congratulations to our students for their big hearts.
With love of reading, and dreaming,
Mr Ken Raven | Head of Junior School