Marcy wrote - I've been waiting forAnne Hunt to talk about the book exchange she got going in her kindergarten last year, but if she won't tell, I will . . . I may have the details wrong, so Anne, correct me if I do. But as I understand it, the kids in her class took books home to read with their parents (more likely, to have their parents read to them.) Accompanying each book was a notebook in which parent & child were to write their reactions to the book -- basically tell what they did or didn't like about it. These notbeook entries then went home with the next kid who took the book home. So parents & kids not only got to read the books, they got to read what other people thought about it, too. > I think that activity promotes about a zillion different things having to > do with literacy. It gets the parents and children thinking and talking > about the book they just read; it gets people writing; it embeds the > reading of the next book into several ongoing conversations (the one > between each parent and child as they think about how _this_ book > compares with the last one, and the one between the people in the class > who've read this book, to name two); and it dramatizes the fact that > reading, writing, and having opinions about books is something > _everybody_ can do & is entitled to do. I thought it was a terrific > idea. I keep trying to figure out ways to suggest it to my daughter's > kindergarten teacher. > > So, Anne, how did it work out in practice? > > I really wish that I could send you the 'real' stuff. The journals are colourful in a very deep sense of that word. There are wonderful drawings, sometimes by the kids in my class and sometimes by other people in the house. There are written responses in crayon, pencil, ink and in print and script. There are photos that families pasted in the journal after reading a book that brought back memories for them. There is a note of thanks from an older sibling who used one particular nonfiction book about the making of crayons to write a report for her grade five class. There are wonderful accounts from parents who didn't know their child could read and there are wonderful accounts from children who proudly announced that they had read to their little brother or sister. There is a poem that one family made up after reading a story about a train. During the time, April through June, last year I finally had my first contact with one father who was struggling to bring up his two daughters on his own. He had never come to school for conferences, and was frequently not reachable by phone. He and his daughter responded to the books regularly writing things like "Connie Dawn and I liked this book. We had fun with the songs." "Connie Dawn just got carryed away with the storey book and the drawing. She liked it."Their responses were always illustrated with bright crayon drawings. I was worried about some of the parents being critical of the responses of others. I had some parents who were unable to read or write well. I had one mom who had gone back to school when her son started kindergarten so that she could become more literate. I also had professionals for whom writing was a daily activity. I planned to respond too, reading each journal and writing in it before it went out to another family. I figured I could model a reasonable response, but, hey, this was NO PROBLEM. I immediately became part of the conversation. Yes it was successful. I think, successful beyond my wildest . . but I also think I really didn't have any preconceived curricular notions about this experience. I just got it started and watched to see what would happen. I really didn't see it as "promoting literacy." I was thinking more about another way of bringing us all together, homes and school, so that we would have one more thing in common. When you teach young children common ground is the solid place you start from. Anne Hunt Anne Hunt Early Childhood Centre University of New Brunswick