DEAR me, get ready to read!
If you’re on the same page with the BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association, the Greater Victoria Board of Education, Vancouver School Board, the BC School Trustees and many others, you and your local schools are getting ready to Drop Everything and Read on Monday, October 21 for 20 minutes. Says BCTLA Vice-President Karen Lindsay, “The government has said that it wants to make BC the most literate jurisdiction in Canada, and I just think this is a simple little idea that models something for kids. I get a feeling of purpose and peace when I think about it.”

Here’s an idea for how to spend your 20 minutes (and then some). The current issue of BCTLA’s Bookmark is crammed with the latest theories on what makes a child want to read. For example, writes Vancouver School Board District Teacher-Librarian Moira Ekdahl, research has shown that children given a “broad choice of high-interest illustration storybooks” will improve not only in language but in writing and syntax control – and this is without traditional testing on what they read. In other words, “literacy and language development should be pleasurable experiences, not painful ones.”