Literacy

Christine Walsh

Let’s Talk Literacy!

Hello and welcome.

My name is Christine Walsh and it gives me great pleasure to introduce myself as the newly appointed Literacy Leader Prep-Year 6 at St Fidelis'. My working experience includes positions as a classroom teacher, Reading Recovery intervention teacher, Learning & Teaching Leader and Literacy Leader at a number of different schools across Melbourne. I particularly enjoy the teaching and learning of Literacy and I hope to inspire and energise others with my enthusiasm and drive to develop deep thinking, life-long literacy learners, who are passionate about reading!

I have many favourite authors and here is a short article about one of my all-time favourites, Morris Gleitzman, who was recently appointed in his new role as Australian Children’s Laureate. In this article he talks about the power of reading and how books can transform a child’s thinking and perceptions.

Happy reading!

Helping A Child To Read Is The Best Gift Of All! - Morris Gleitzman

During more than 30 years of writing for young people, I’ve been to a couple of thousand schools. My main focus on those visits apart from spending important time in the staffroom working out which is the visitor’s mug, has been listening to young readers talk about their reading; learning what  it is that really keeps them turning the page.

Some of it is what you’d expect.  Fun, excitement, the chance in each new book to make new friends and have new experiences, sometimes in fascinatingly different times and places, sometimes in places you know well but are seeing through different eyes, while discovering the joy of words and what you can do with them and what they can do to you.

Reading stories creates literacy like nothing else. But there’s more.  And when I first discovered this surprise extra as a young author, I was so stunned that the visitor’s mug slopped from my incredulous fingers (luckily teachers are great at diving catches)/

Stories don’t just help kids develop language literacy.  The help them develop life literacy too.

Here’s how it works…

Young readers love stories in which a young character is facing a problem bigger and more threatening than any they’ve faced before.  To solve or survive the problem, the character must develop skills and qualities beyond their previous experience or homework Such as:

THINKING bravely and honestly about what’s causing the problem

DEVELOPING their research skills to better understand what they’re up against

DISCOVERING big problems need teamwork, so the character must form friendships and alliances.  Understanding enemies is a help too.  All of which requires development of people skills, in particular empathy.

REALISING creative thinking is a must because a character with a problem needs problem-solving strategies

AND that resilience is inevitable because big problems are never solved on page 27, not when an author is contracted to write 250 pages.  Which gives the character plenty of opportunities to pick themselves up and try again.

You can probable see where this is going.  As young characters steam ahead on their problem-solving journeys, young readers are at their side, imaginations aglow, offering advice and care and creative solutions.  And they are absorbing every one of those new skills and abilities.

In my current role as Australian Children’s Laureate, almost every day I meet young people whose lives are powered by books.  Reading for pleasure keeps their minds expanding, their hearts beating with humanity and helps them explore who they are and who they could become.  And when one of your favourite activities is equipping you with resilience, creative thinking, empathy, bravery, interpersonal skills and problem-solving abilities, there’s no limit to who you can be.

In a perfect world, every child would have this experience every day - ideally in a school with books for all and teachers with time to share them and principals who know that everything they wish for their students will happen spectacularly better if those students spend at least a part of each day being guided through the realms of reading and being initiated into its limitless possibilities by an experience, highly educated, infinitely wise professional guardian of all that is precious in our human journey.  A national living treasure known in the staffroom as teacher librarian.  

Parents and carers have another role to play in the equipping of young people to be the literate heroes of their own lives, this one at home.  

No, I’m not saying sit around for hours each day reading lots of books and setting a good example for the kids.  It would be great if you could, but in the real word, at least until we parents get ourselves organised and agitate for the 48 - hour day, that’s probably not going to happen.

There is something you can do, though, that really doesn’t take very long.  When young people are reading life-changing stories, they want to talk about them, often to older people they trust and love.  Try to make the time for those conversations.  They will truly turbocharge the reading that is fuelling your kids’ life journeys.  

Written by Morris Gleitzman

Book Club News

Scholastic Book Club- Issue 1 out now

Don't forget to look for the Book Club Issue catalogue that will be coming home in your child’s schoolbag. Book Club provides a fun and convenient way of bringing the best in children's literature into your home. It’s packed full of exciting books from best-selling authors, popular titles and series that kids love, as well as products and books that make perfect gifts for younger siblings who may not be at school yet.

Ordering from Book Club is easy—simply go online and place your order and then Scholastic’s ‘book elves’ take care of the rest. Before you know it, your child will have a lovely surprise to take home once their order gets delivered to their classroom. When ordering from Book Club, you are not only helping your children, but you are also helping your school—20% of your spend goes back to your school in valuable Scholastic Rewards, which are used to buy classroom resources.

To celebrate the start of the New Year, any family ordering from issue 1 will also receive a free All About Me Activity Journal to help us kick-start our 2019 plans.

For more information about Scholastic and Book Club, visit www.scholastic.com.au