During 2000-2001 our school is working with increasing the learners joy of reading to make them good readers. My colleague at the library meets every group in school in ages between 7 and 10 (12 groups/week).

Learners 7 year: Every week listen to a story and lending books.

Learners 8 years: Every week reading Easy-readers and writing/painting about the story.

Problem:

One of the groups of 8 year old learners never reach such peace in the group making it possible to sit down and read. My colleague defines the problem to 6 boys who are not willing to read at all. After some various suggested solutions - as reading out loud for these boys, letting them listen to a tape, letting them sit down just drawing - and everything still is a disaster we will try to exclude the boys from the rest of the group.

Another problem is our library, which only has one room. If you want to find peace with one group you have to close the door and exclude the other 480 learners from the library. Therefore we have moved our work to the ordinary classrooms. The change has strengthened my opinion in that the library is a function more than a room. It is the function you need in the school. The fact that you have a room you call a library is more a practical (and economical) way to collect your books.
But - the classrooms are not always that cozy!

At the IASL-conference in Malmo August 2000 I listened to Mr Torben Weinreich from Denmark. He and Anette Steffensen have made a research how children prefer to have it when they read. They found that the children wanted to lie on a bed or in an armchair and they wanted candies or food when they read…far away from the normal situation in school.

But what can we do to make the environmental conditions cozy? And is the reading environment important to the joy of reading?

I built a temporary tent for story telling in the library. We had bought cushions, a quilt and a nice lamp to make it very cozy. I gathered the boys around me with a tape-recorder to interview them about what they think about books and reading. I had no chance to tell any questions because they had a much more important question to me:

Is it true that there is a dragon under our library?

Oh yes…I remembered that I two years ago desperately invented a dragon. We have a kind of heating system under the floor and during a period it was some problem with the system. The electricians had opened a flap and I was afraid that the children should take the flap up and fall down. In the same time you could easily hear some hissing noise from the flap - I told all the children it was the hissing from a dragon who lived under the library. He was guarding all the stories in the library - BUT - he didn’t like any noise at all…

You all have to be very nice and quiet, because I don’t want the dragon to be angry and begin to spit out fire here…

It was two years ago, but the boys remembered the story and wanted me to confirm it! Of course I did!

It was the beginning of reading dragon-stories.

We read both fiction and non fiction about dragons.

Every boy draw their own dragon and I wrote a little story and put it together to a book. We showed the book to the whole group and it was obvious that they couldn’t cope with a big group yet…

Although the big interest was focused on the library dragon (and I don’t mean myself…) I had the chance to put some questions whether they were used to books, if they could read, if somebody used to read to them and what kind of books they liked. Here is a compression of what they said.

They were fairly used to listen to books at home.
They liked to look in non-fiction books mostly about sports.

They didn’t like to read by themselves. They thought most books were boring.

I checked how many loans the boys had comparing to the big group. My thought that they didn’t borrow books was wrong. They had borrowed more books than the others. I did an interview with one of the boys and asked him what he thought about the books he just had returned. He said that he liked them very well and claimed that he had read them by himself. Well, just a few questions later I realized he was not at all that good reader but he looks at the pictures. He mostly borrows books about sport and he missed books about table tennis.

After a while I stopped to build tents and started to use the small storeroom instead. After Christmas we moved out to the library and sat in the sofas. It didn’t work very well. The boys couldn’t concentrate themselves so we moved back to the small room again and began to read ghost stories.

Now in the end of the project I ask them what they prefer and they all prefer the tent.

The boys like the reading time now and think that Library-lesson is something real nice. It has been a change in attitude. They don’t read very well and they don’t borrow much books - but they like the library.

Since I had began to think in this way about reading environment I wanted to try different ways with other groups in school who didn’t function all right.

Therefore I will here describe 3 more groups where we have changed focus from the main planning for the term as described above.

This was a group that my colleague had problem to find peace in. We split the group and built a temporary tent for each group. Then we decided to read out loud from the same book in both groups. We found some kind of peace in both groups apart from 2 boys who are well known as "non-concentrators" - it is sad to say that they destroy much of the peace in the groups.

We also changed the time for the library lesson from 70 minutes to 40 minutes.

We read for about 20 minutes and then they had time to look for books to loan for 20 minutes.

After Christmas we began the work with the national competition, The Book Jury, where children up to 19th years old vote for the best book published during the year before (2000). My colleague had put together a box with picture books to the pre-school-classes of 6th years old learners. In some kind of desperation I took the books into the group of nine years old and began to read. It was a success and a aha experience to me - I hadn’t realised how childish they were…

Then my colleague and me have turned down our expectations and everything is working much well. At the end of this project we have read ghost stories and talked, talked and talked and suddenly there is contact. After a time of reading we go to the library and they lend books.

After Christmas another problem was arisen. One part of the school has time for reading 20 minutes per day. Most of the children read but there were one group of boys in the 4th grade that didn’t manage to find the peace to read. At the same time we realised that the library lesson about famous Swedish authors was too difficult for them. Face the facts: they were not good enough readers. As I was working on this project I volunteered as a reader to the group every day. I started with the method used amongst "Book and Tape" = the child listens to the story from a tape and follows the text in the book. Now I was the Tape - I read out loud and the boys had one copy each of the book. We sat in an ordinary room - nothing extra cosy at all.

During January to April we have read 11 books. Some about the time amongst the Vikings, some classics (Kipling and Dickens in Easy-reader-version) and some about youths in Sweden today. Every reading-time I start with recapitulating what have happened before by asking questions to the boys.

The difference now is a changing of attitude.

They love the times when we meet.

They enjoy listening to the books.

One boy has started to read (he couldn’t read before).

Some of them have begun to read by their own at home, but most of them will not take the extra work to read by themselves. It will take more than 4 months to change that attitude!

This group couldn’t find peace either. We tried with different tents in different places. The solution came when one teacher suggested us to sit in an ordinary classroom and on their ordinary places. They were not allowed to change place. The only "cozy" thing was to turn off the headlight and place small lamps around the room. Then they began to read.

In my school we have done a change from working in a traditional way - one educator one class - to a model with a team of teachers together with a bigger group of learners. The school building is also changed to fit in this new way of working. We have worked this way for four years but still there is "one teacher one class" in many ways.

When there are problems our principal says - "you have to solve the problem in the team" and he means that you can’t ask for more resources (because we can’t get any) you must find ways to use your resources in a different way.

When I visited schools in South Africa I understood this much clearer. The schools I saw in South Africa are built to work "one teacher one class" and it makes it very hard to collaborate with the library (especially when the librarian is a teacher responsible to one class as well) and follow the curriculum to work OBE and so on.

I really understood our schools opportunities to meet every child and that I must take responsibility of this in my work

I have found that there are no easy answers in the question if joy of reading depends on environment. Most of the groups liked the tents and enjoyed it when it was dark and cozy. But there were also groups who couldn’t find peace because of the tent - they needed structure and continuity.

My strongest conclusion is that flexibility is the answer.

The possibility to change the groups together with others in the school.

The possibility to change room.

The possibility to change focus, when you realize the theme or work is too difficult to the group for an example.

The possibility to change method.

But, of course, this is a project with a skilled librarian in a library with a budget. You must count the professionalism in knowing about the "right" books and the opportunity to buy books in the answer of the question of this project.

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