The Reader's Circle

Here's another project.

Can I get a group of 14 kids, 8 to 11 years old, mostly second language English speakers, to be conversant in 12 books by June. I see them for an hour on Saturday morning about twice a month. That's about 12 meetings.

I run a little club at my kids' primary school called the 'Reader's Circle'. I started it because I heard about a competition called 'Battle of the Books' in which a group of up to 12 kids read 12 books and then participate in a quiz where they answer questions about the contents of the books. 'In which book does a dog cry because he misses his family' etc. The answer is always the title and author of the book. The kids have 20 seconds to pool knowledge and discuss the answer.

It's fun and you can't cheat it by a teacher drilling answers into the kids. It has to involve kids reading and interacting about the content of the books. I thought my own kids would enjoy it and would be able to meet like-minded school-mates, but also that the school would never take it on themselves. So I proposed to run it for them if they found me the kids, they accepted, and I've been at it for the last 5 years! I kept it going after my son graduated to secondary school because my daughter was in P2 and would be able to join at P4. And re-starting is harder than continuing. Well she's actually joined the Readers Circle at P3 this year along with a friend and 'a boy from her class' even though they won't be able to join the external competition. So. That's the background.

We usually start the meetings in October but this year the school has doubts about the reading ability and attitude of the group so they aren't taking it so seriously. May be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but considering the 'troubles' we've had this year, any earlier meetings would have been cancelled. It's been a difficult 6 months.

I want to try two methods from Memory Craft to help the kids with remembering all the titles and authors and also attaching other information about the books. The Animacy Alphabet and the Memory Palace.

We hold the Reader's Circle in the English Room, ruled over by lovely Mr Gareth. It's a very busy space. I think it's big enough that we could create it as a memory palace for the 12 books. The kids all have some classes in the English room with Mr G. so they should know it pretty well and have a chance to review the space. However it's going to take some time for them to start reading and get to know the books, characters, locations and incidents.

Kids putting up the Alphabet

I decided to start by assigning each book one letter in the Animacy Alphabet. And I brought a print out of Lynne Kelly's Visual Alphabet and talked to the kids about it. They were keen and with Mr G's blessing, helped me to find a bit of wall space and blue-tacked up the alphabet.

Without much work, I already noticed that Arachne's web echoes the shape of the Umbrella Mouse's umbrella. I'm also going to assign one specific book to each kid and give the kid the job of creating links. It will also help me with my terrible memory for the kids' names. I've notice that Ardie has been assigned to letter D with Ottoline and the Yellow Cat. I think the Cat is secretly a very naughty yellow dragon.

I wonder if I can combine the two, by assigning letters and their books to locations around the room, to give the books a bit more space. I'm going to try. Next Saturday I'll take some photos and map out the room.

This is my challenge. To keep it fun. Some kids will read all the books, some will read 2 or three. The comp is designed that that can work as kids can tell each other about the books they've read. I really like that aspect, as it allows the strong/ fast readers to bring the others along for the ride. And it rewards team work over star power. I've found that the better and more confident readers (including my son) caused the most mistakes in the comp because they didn't stop to ask the group.

I've infiltrated the English Room!

When I first read The Memory Code in 2016, I tried asking the kids to each create an imaginary memory palace drawing for the book they were reading and we could use it as a stage to help share aspects of the characters and incidents. Like a picture of a house where the character could be. Some did great detailed drawings, some didn't. But it didn't really help and the project drifted off. I can see now that it wasn't really spacial.

I know that the kids can do it and I have some idea what it takes to get ready for the comp, so I'm interested to see the difference that these memory systems can make. This is one of my weekend joys. In the school where I teach, very few kids love reading. I'd guess 2 out of 550 read in English. And in fact very few teachers read for pleasure. As much as I want to sleep in on Saturdays, it's cool to be around these mouthy little readers.

All Readers Circle Posts
 https://memorycrafthk.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-readers-circle.html

https://memorycrafthk.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-readers-circle-ii.html
https://memorycrafthk.blogspot.com/2019/12/reader-circle-by-kalamata.html