Reading to Learn
Our school believes that "a reader today makes a leader tomorrow". We encourage and prepare our students to read in different ways. We make infrastructure of reading to let the students have suitable resources and we also organize activities to arouse and keep their passion in reading.
Strategies in reading
- To purchase a wide range of books which include different levels of English and Chinese books (fictions and non-fictions) to cater for the diverse reading interests and abilities of the students. In 2023, our library collection includes around 25000 books.
- To acquire and circulate books to support teachers in their professional development. The library also maintains a collection for teachers to equip teachers facing future challenges in education development. Recently, our school promote positive education among students as well as teachers, in which we build a contemporary collection of reference literature for teachers. However, the collection is housed inside the staff room and not much space for nice and easily accessible shelves.
- To encourage students to read more books in morning reading. On one hand, we make use of the timetable setting to help students build a habit of reading. Every morning, students starts their day of learning by reading a book of their own choice. On the other hand, we encourage parents to prepare book with their children. This not only save the time of classroom management, but also provide an opportunity for parents to make conversation with their children.
- To provide library lessons to every class, to enhance their reading habit and reading interest. We arrange library lessons with class teachers by borrowing one home period in each term. Each class usually have three library lessons in whole year. In the library lessons, the teacher-librarian guide students on knowing library skills and encourage building positive reading habit by exploring different jewels of the library collection. Through quality literature and author studies, we widen students' horizon and raise their literacy skills. We also aim at promoting information literacy skills so that our students will grow to be a responsible digital citizen.
- P6 graduation project research lessons. One of our signature activities is the challenging project research provide the p6 students an experience of SRL. This is not just an assignment, but involve students to plan, experiment, research, study, and report. Library plays an important part when planning and doing research. The librarian provides not just information and a platform for making the research a fruitful and interesting experience.
- Develop a reading atmosphere outside the library by organizing reading related activities outside the library for KS1 and KS2 students. We believe that students like reading and our children have lots of resources to read. It is our responsibility to guide our students to read quality reading materials and explorer new domains in their reading garden. Every year, the RPC organizes a series of activities and build an atmosphere of book-around in the campus, this includes reading fortnight, BOB, as well as notice boards and bookshelves in every classrooms and public areas on some floors.
- Parent workshops on reading are organized for KS1 and KS2 respectively with different foci. Our library starts with library parent-volunteers to help daily routine of library administrative works. Some parent-volunteers also interested to help storytelling in recesses to students. The library organizes workshops for interested parents to learn more in storytelling and the library will also provide opportunities for them to tell stories for our students.
- Promote the school wide practice of “Book in Hand” during morning reading time. Our teachers want to further support and encourage students to always prepare a reading material whenever necessary. The first step is to encourage students (and parents) to prepare a book for every morning reading. This also provide a scenario for parent-child conversation. Second, teachers remind students to bring at least a book for reading when they travel on school bus, such as dental check, singing contest or choral speaking, where they may have to spend plenty of time in waiting. This may help students to build a habit to enjoy reading in every aspect of life.
Reading Activities
In order to encourage the love of reading in our students so they become life-long readers, the RPC provides a diverse range of activities to promote reading by our students. Parental support is pivotal to the success of these activities.
Book Swap
Students donate books they have read and in return they can redeem other titles. In this way, they are giving their old favourite books a new lease of life as well as acquiring new reading materials. This is to encourage a read-sharing culture and an environment-saving lifestyle.
Storytelling @ Lunch Recess
Students are encouraged to sign up and share their favourite stories with their school-mates through regular lunch recess storytelling sessions. Students are encouraged to sign up voluntarily and share their favourite stories with their schoolmates through regular lunch recess storytelling sessions. With the new setting in new library, we should then have a little platform to become the base of storytelling activities.
D.E.A.R. and Classroom Reading Corners
Reading corners are set up in each classroom. Chinese and English books are placed for students' leisure reading. Books donated by parents are placed in the classroom by students for sharing are also welcome. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bookshelves are now temporarily closed.
D.E.A.R. Calendar (P.1-2)
Every student receives a copy of D.E.A.R. calendar in the start of the new school year. Students are required to read on a daily basis and record on the calendar. The calendar also suggests a variety of activities which promote reader-text interactions.
D.E.A.R. time
During the Morning Reading sessions, all class teachers and students "drop-everything-and-read" books together in the classroom.
Inter-Class Reading Competition
Starting from October, parents are encouraged to enter the reading records of their child in the school Intranet during the first week of next month. Each student who meets the requirement of reading amount will score marks for their class and themselves. There are awards in each term to acclaim those score the most and borrow books from the school library. The class score is also recorded in the “House score”. So, their reading habit not only award themselves but also acknowledge in class and group.
Battle of the Books (B.O.B.)
Ten titles of books are selected in each phase by Chinese, English, General Studies and Mathematics teachers. Students are asked to read them and to participate in a competition to test their knowledge of the recommended books. Class scores are also shown in the House score to encourage participation.
The Reading Fortnight
Reading activities such as author visits, Pajamas Reading Day, Character Dress-up Day, Reader's Theatre performances, reading-related activities in the Library, movies in English Land and treasure hunts of books will be organize by teachers or inviting parents or guests to let students to experience different interesting reading activities.
Newspaper and Book Order
In order to encourage students to read different kinds of books, the School Library provide opportunities to order quality newspapers, magazines and books throughout the year.
Book Fair and Exhibition
The Book Fairs are often arranged on the Student-led Conference Days, and suitable book suppliers are invited to exhibit various Chinese and English books, magazines as well as educational software.
Mini / theme-based book exhibition
The library co-operates with subjects and teams to explore and display books they wish the students to focus or related to recent topic they are teaching. This is also a way to support students with different learning diversity. Previous topics included “life-cycle” and “insects” with English subject; “成語” with Chinese subject and “environment protection” with GS subject (just to name a few).
Parent volunteers' organisation
On one hand, parents are our valuable resources to help organizing activities; and on the other hand, parents also learn the art parenting through contact with educators. We have a team of parent volunteers in library to serve daily routine, festival decoration and help in school events (such as BookSwop, B.O.B. etc.) We also started the StoryPama workshops with Chinese subject in 2020-2021. With their participation and sharing, we hope to build a powerful team of storytelling parents to demonstrate in different events.
Library service under the pandemic
When the school is preparing for resuming the face-to-face school time, the library also preparing to resume service. Early in March 2020, the school has already purchased a UV book sanitizer to clean all the returned books. The book shelves in classrooms and open areas are closed. To avoid students to gather too closed together, we arrange one class to visit the library in each recess. We also place book return cart in every floors for students to return borrowed books, so the books will be sanitized.
Increase collection of ebooks / e-resources
We always encourage students to read printed books rather than ebooks. This is to protect their eye’s health and minimize their screen time. We hope the students would smell the bibliosmia (scent of the printed paper) when this were still young. However, because the stop of face-to-face teaching at school, the library needs to purchase and deliver the ebooks. With the help from subject-teachers, we start our ebook collection in late 2020. And we will be continuous to build the e-collection of quality books. This year, we provide 2 Chinese ebook platforms: HKedCity and HyRead; and English ebook platforms: Epic and National Geographic Kids, together with online database Gale in Context for learning and teaching.