This blog belongs to Owen who is 11 years old. He moved to Grenada in September 2014 with us, his family, while I volunteer with Cuso International. He is sharing his thoughts about moving to a foreign country, living in the Caribbean and how it is to come home after ten months away.




Thursday, 20 November 2014

Learning to Love Reading

When I was in grade 3 at Brighton Public School I did not love to read. I did not like the selection of books, and it was noisy when it was time to read. So my mom and dad decided to put me in Goodwin Learning Centre for grade 4.

Mrs Goodwin was my language teacher, we had to do writing, reading and spelling. We had author of the week where all the kids in my grade read the same author like Mo Willems, Roger Hargreaves, Tomie dePaola, and Jan Brett to name a few. Half way through the school year we read Jan Brett and Tomie dePaola and we read all the books by those authors. We would have to write five facts about the story, a sentence and list the illustrator and author.

At Goodwin they had a whole room that was a library and every class had lots books too. The books were organized by author or subject. This made it easier to find the books I liked. We also had a book collection counting system. You have 22 lines on a sheet of paper but you only use 11 of them; you had to write the author, the name of the book and the date you read it. After 11 books you would have to pick one of the books you read, draw a picture, do a summary of the book, rate it and decide whether you would recommend it. I really liked that part. By the end of the school year I had read over 300 books!

Now in Grenada I am reading the Harry Potter series. I am on the Goblet of Fire that has 734 pages. It is nice to have the Mt. Zion Library because without it I would be bored.


Mt. Zion Library
The next series I want to read is Percy Jackson or the J.R.R Tolkien books. Mt Zion had the Percy Jackson books donated by Hands Across the Sea. My school had books donated by this charity too, I can't wait for them to open up a library and see the books! I want to help paint or do something to help create the new library space, so my teachers can mark our work. And so I can get reading sooner.

I am grateful to all the teachers at Goodwin for making me a way better reader.