It’s time to Drop Everything And Read about our D.E.A.R Day.
At King’s College India, everyone celebrated the D.E.A.R Day on November 29th, 2017 (Wednesday) at 2:00 pm, right after a sumptuous lunch in the school Dining Hall.
So, what really is D.E.A.R? DEAR is a quick, simple, easy to organize and extremely effective way to get both staff and students reading! A DEAR session consists of getting the whole school to stop, drop what they are doing and to read, for pleasure, for 30 minutes (hence the Acronym).
The introduction of D.EA.R session came as a result of meetings and discussions about creating a whole school reading culture. We were aware that if students do not read regularly, it has a negative impact on attainment. Therefore, we decided to use the final lesson on last Wednesday as our first D.E.A.R Session, which included 30 minutes of reading for pleasure and 10 minutes of informal whole class discussion about the experience. Volunteering students distributed flyers to promote the DEAR session and on the “D day”, we ran around the school with cameras and a video camera, taking pictures and footage of the session. At the end of the session, each student got a certificate of participation as a token of appreciation.
Staff were surprised at how well their session had gone; some students had complained when the 20 minutes were over and some staff wanted to carry on reading, too!
So, yes. D.E.A.R had arrived and was there to stay!
DEAR has evolved and we are looking forward at celebrating DEAW (Drop Everything and Write) for Poetry and Short Stories and also, DREAM (Drop Everything and Move) where the whole school will perform dance or drama as part of their lesson.
Who knows where this will take us next?
