Did you know?
- Children learn between 4 000 and 12 000 words a year through reading.
- By reading just 20 minutes a day, a person will read, on average, 1.8 million words a year.
- Reading for pleasure is an indicator of a child’s future, even more so than family circumstances, parents’ educational background or parents’ income. In other words, regardless of where you are from or where you go to school, reading for pleasure is one way of promoting your future success. Just ten minutes’ of reading a day with children can make a difference.
- Learners who have as few as 20 books at home achieve three more years of schooling than those who don’t have books at home.
- Children who have learnt to read by the age of 8 are less likely to end up in prison.
- Reading six minutes a day can reduce your stress by 68%. Reading reduces your blood pressure and lowers your heart rate.
- Reading 30 minutes or more a day will mean you will live 23 months longer than people who don’t.
- Adults who read regularly have been shown to be more involved in charity and volunteer work than those who don’t.
- People with higher literacy skills have been shown to have better verbal and non-verbal cognitive abilities.
3rd March 2022 is World Book Day
Created by UNESCO in 1995 as a worldwide celebration of reading and books, World Book Day is celebrated in 100 countries around the world. The purpose of World Book Day is to foster a love of reading. Reading for pleasure is a pastime that is losing popularity among young people these days, and World Book Day wants to prevent that.
How to celebrate World Book Day
Being a TEFL teacher, it’s natural for you to celebrate World Book Day in the classroom. While of course you should be promoting reading and reading for pleasure every day, set aside some time on this World Book Day to engage in activities related to reading.
And there are so many things you can do! Here are some of our favourite ideas:
- They say don’t judge a book by its cover but we think you can totally do that! Visit your local or school library and let your students choose a book to take out. They can compare their book covers and explain to their friends why they chose them.
- Watch the video of MC Grammar as he sings a song about World Book Day. See if your students can recognise the different books he talks about.
- Create a quiz for your students based on books, quotes and literary characters. Divide the class into teams and they can compete against each other for points.
- Play book bingo.
- Allocate 30 minutes of quiet reading time when students can read whatever they want.
- Ask your students to bring in a book and have a swap shop where students exchange books with each other.
But, of course, we should also incorporate reading into our everyday lessons. Here are a few of our most popular reading activities for you to use in your classroom:
- Teaching Young Learners Using Storytime
- 5 Ways to Make Reading Texts More Exciting
- Top EFL Classroom Reading Activities
If you’re out of ideas for what books you can use in your EFL classrooms, then check out these posts to help you out:
- 10 Diverse Children’s Books for the Classroom
- 5 Diverse Children’s Books for Older Students
- 5 English Novels to Recommend to Your Intermediate Learners
As English teachers, you probably already have a passion for reading and literacy, and we hope that you are passing on that love to your learners. Hopefully we’ve given you some ideas to make incorporating reading into your lessons a little easier.
Happy World Book Day – and thanks for reading!
The post Get Involved! It’s World Book Day! appeared first on The TEFL Academy Blog.
