Speedy Sloths and Boys Reading

This week, Seatoun students were invited to take part in a national read aloud, an event that was happening simultaneously across schools and libraries all over Australia and New Zealand. The book chosen this year was The Speedy Sloth and as a treat, a zookeeper from Singapore Zoo was the story teller for the day, along with one of her charges, a sloth called Indigo. There were also other live readings from Sydney Zoo.

After the reading we talked about sloths and their natural habitat and found out that Mr Finnigan had met one during a trip to the Amazon Rainforest.

You can watch the recording that we watched here and also download the ebook of The Speedy Sloth to read yourself at home.

As a happy coincidence, I also happened to read a great article about boys reading and how we can encourage more boys to read for pleasure and not just because they have to. This is something that has been talked about for decades and despite the high levels of literacy in our school, the trend is not reversing and there is still a gap. It was interesting to note in the attendees at the read aloud yesterday - out of 26 children attending, only 3 were boys. It was fantastic to have Mr Finnigan join us for this.

This article takes only 2 minutes to read and is full of ideas. The main elements are around encouragement, reading together and role modelling and you may notice more signs around school that we are trying to show students that we enjoy reading too. Mr Finnigan's sign on his door is just one example but all teachers are on board. We are always looking for new ideas and ways to bring everyone along on our reading journey and we are always happy to help. Conferences are a great opportunity to pop into the library with your child (of any gender!) and look together for books to enjoy or ask for suggestions.