On a sunny Wednesday 24 students in Year 9 and Year 10, members of the Social Service Group, visited Salem’s town library in Mimmenhausen. They attended a very informative workshop with Maren Dronia, from the Lake Constance Children’s Foundation, on the topic of reading aloud. Full of ambition and highly motivated, we plunged right in to the subject matter and talked about our own first experiences of being read aloud to. After hearing some theoretical information about the significance of reading and reading aloud to children, we explored the library. Alone or in a group we each picked out a children’s book which we could analyze from cover to cover. We chose German children’s books like “The Gruffalo”, “The School for Magical Animals”, the Conny series, or “The Ogglies”. Ms. Dronia gave us lots of good advice and assistance.

Then we used our newly acquired knowledge to write up our own recommendations for reading aloud. We tried to take into account ideas for using the illustrations to arouse the expectations of the listener, for reading in alternation with a beginner reader, and how to integrate craftwork activities or games into the reading session. We also talked about using stuffed animals to make the story come alive. We are really grateful to Ms. Dronia for making this an exciting and fun-filled afternoon, and of course also to Princess Stephanie of Baden, whose foundation made this workshop possible. As a result each of us has more knowledge and new motivation that we can put into our social service project of supporting students in the primary and special needs school in Salem. And we all agree: reading aloud is fun!

Miriam Wunderlich, 10D4, Social Service Captain