ISP Reading Challenge – We love reading!

On the International Day of Literacy this year, International Schools Partnership (ISP) launched its first annual ISP Reading Challenge. The month-long challenge for our schools in the Middle East, encourages students to read as much as possible in English and Arabic.

Children in the younger years received an ISP Reading Challenge Treasure Map or an ISP Reading Challenge Passport to record their reading, while children in our secondary years are uploading their ISP Reading Challenges using a digital link.

Challenge Accepted!

Over the month-long event, as children were encouraged to track their reading, we are proud to say that they accepted the challenge wholeheartedly.

There were over 8600 additional conversations about reading that happened in our Early Years / Foundation Stage, Kindergarten, Elementary, and Primary years.

In the Secondary years there were 700 entries into the Reading Challenge. Other highlights in the secondary years include:

• 1450 reading challenges were completed
• 131 reading challenges were designed by secondary children

Part of our challenge urged students to read in multiple languages. Beyond English and Arabic ISP students read in 24 other languages. They are:

Special inspirational visits

Throughout the month we had the privilege of welcoming a number of authors to visit our students virtually.

The children’s authors read books, spoken about the importance of reading, and shared their own journeys. Authors our students met include:

• Stephanie Robert,
• Sara Ghannoum ,
• Maria Georgiou (an ISP Teacher at Aspen Heights British School)
• Musab Beiruteih (an ISP Teacher at The Aquila School)
• Stuart Yates (an ISP Teacher at The British School of Malaga in Spain)
• Fatima Bakro
• Doha Khasanwaneh

To learn more about the challenge please visit https://lp.internationalschoolspartnership.com/reading-challenge-2021

Why we love reading

“As the parent of a young child, a bedtime story was the perfect end of the day.  It helped my children unwind and process the events of the day whist at the same opening their eyes to the wonders of the world and letting their imaginations run wild.  Now my children are older, we still share the books we are reading. Through conversations at the dinners table or in the car we love to discuss our reading, the interesting things we are learning or finding out. It is also interesting how many texts I send to my daughter at university – interesting newspaper or magazine articles, pages from books and recipes I have found.

I hope you and your family have joined in our ISP Reading Challenge together and enjoyed developing a family love of reading. “ – Abigail Fishbourne, School Improvement Partner, ISP Middle East

Did you know:

• Reading reduces stress by 68 percent . Reading: the ultimate form of self-care!
• Owning your own books matters. A lot. When children have a home library, as few as 20 books of their own at home (think: one bookshelf full), they achieve …
• It doesn’t take much to read a lot of words. Children who read for 20 minutes a day will read approximately 1,800,000 words per year or 23,400,000 over their time in school.
• And all that reading pays off. Children who read 1,000,000 words a year are in the top two percent of reading achievement.
• Reading is the fastest way to build vocabulary. Children learn 4,000 to 12,000 words per year through reading.