Reading Marathon

I just finished a phone conversation with Chen Pin-xuan (陳品璇), a student who graduated from NHSH and now is teaching at Taipei Municipal Tatong High School. Although I never taught her class, via some activities in school, we got to know each other.

She told me on the phone that this semester she is doing a project--Reading Marathon, with students who took her class, "Picture Books," as an elective course. In her class, students are divided into 12 groups, with three in one. Then each group is handed a copy of the picture book used for later class discussion. During the first 15 minutes, the three students in each group read the book together and have group discussion first, for example, figuring out the meaning of a new word. Then follows a class discussion.

For this class, Ms. Chen set up a small library, which holds more than a hundred picture books. This is where Reading Marathon comes into play. Students can borrow picture books from the library, read them, and wrote reflections on them, which Ms. Chen reads via Google something. Depending on the length and the difficulty level, the books are labeled with different mileages, for example, two kilometers or 800 meters. When accumulating certain amount of reading mileage, students can "earn" a picture book from Ms. Chen.

An interesting project, indeed!