Saturday, February 28, 2015

Winter Reading 2015 School Days Around the World

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This is a quick visit to over a dozen schools in different countries around the world. Some students live in boarding schools while some have to walk for an hour to reach the nearest school. Schools in one place may have digital tablets for each student while in another country the school has only a few books. Each one is unique, but they all have one thing in common - they are places where children gather to learn. The collage style illustrations are inviting and fun, and the positives in each school are emphasized (rather than dwelling on the negative). I especially like the quote from Malala at the opening of the book. The extra material includes suggested activities to help children learn more about the places shown in the book. There is also a glossary to help with the words from other languages that are used in some of the descriptions. 

This would be an excellent book to pair with This Is the Way We Go to School by Edith Baer and Steve Bjorkman, or the Scholastic Nonfiction Reader of the same title by Laine Falk and Amanda Miller. Together they could be used in a lesson or unit on cultures around the world, comparing something that children are familiar with - school. I would love to use this book to kick off a simple research project, and team up with the art teacher to have the students create their own collages of the countries they investigated. We could put it all together in a class book, or create a museum display for other classes to visit.

I read an e-book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

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