- As well as dance, chess or sports meetings, children and young people who like literature will also have the opportunity to share their hobby, get to know each other and have a fun day next Sunday. 130 young people who have been writing letters to each other during the school year will meet in Zarautz. “They have experienced the exchange of letters with great emotion.”
The guides of the children’s reading groups were beginning to get involved in different towns, helping each other, sharing ideas to guide the sessions, and advising on which book has worked well. In one of these meetings the question arose: why not, as it is done with many sports and activities, hold a meeting in which literary lovers can make a different plan and meet young people from other villages?
Say it and do it, on June 1 they will meet in Zarautz. To enliven the meeting, 130 young people from the 4th, 5th and 6th years of Primary Education (children from 9 to 12 years old) have previously exchanged letters. They are students of Zarautz, Ibarra, Iurreta, Eibar, Elgoibar, Oñati, Zestoa, Getaria and Errenteria. To decide the couples, the criterion has been to write to one of the other villages – and receive their letters – and that each reading group searches for their partner in as many different villages as possible.
One of the organizers is Xabi Salaberria, who tells LA LUZ that the children have experienced the project with great emotion. Some have written and received three or four letters, others less; “in the case of most, it went very well.” They recommended to the students what they could write about in the letters: to explain themselves and the people, then to dedicate themselves to their hobbies, “and we also asked them to keep literature present, to comment on the last book they have read and/or to make recommendations. After all, they are all part of the reading team, so they share this hobby.”
Having this illusion beyond the reading group, meeting new people, making friends, enjoying a special weekend plan serves to promote reading.
Oral stories, poetry and storytelling
On Sunday in Zarautz, young people who have met each other by letter will meet face to face. The day will begin with knowledge games, after which three workshops have been prepared to take place alternately in three groups: a workshop to tell oral stories, a poetry workshop and a storytelling session by Dorleta Kortazar. Then they will have lunch together and in the afternoon there will be corners where you can relax. Plan to close the day: make book recommendations to each other and propose how they would like the meeting to be for the next school year.
“We believe that all this serves to promote reading: having that illusion beyond the monthly reading group, meeting new people, making friends, enjoying a special weekend plan,” says Xabi Salaberria.
In the round table of How to Read Students, Salaberria herself emphasized the power of connecting reading with pleasure. “How you’ve worked through the years, what children associate reading with as they progress through elementary school, has an impact, and they often associate reading with a job, a fact sheet, or a test. If in practice you don’t dedicate enough time to reading to really enjoy and captivate yourself, and if every time you read it you do some work later, that’s how they internalize it.”
"If you don't dedicate your time to reading to enjoy and captivate, if every time you read it to do some work later, that's how you internalize it"
One of the main messages of the round table’s interlocutors was that the basis for promoting reading is as simple as – in these times – complicated: they say that the starting point is time and calm to really enjoy. “Leave all the stimuli and read calmly, with pleasure, you don’t need more, you don’t need to be an expert”.