A week and a day

So Thursday was World Book Day and, perhaps as a result, my week has been incredibly busy with all manner of reading based activity:

• I have been back to Sheffield University where I was a student, training current students to be reading mentors in Sheffield primary schools. They will be helping children be Book Busters; an ESCAL (Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate) project in conjunction with Sheffield School Library Service.
• Our new Care2Read course begun last week with a group of foster parents at the fostering service. I am always so amazed by foster carers; taking on children of different ages and backgrounds and with such different needs, often as well as their own children. They are so dedicated to the children they care for they're going to make perfect reading partners. They are also able to inspire new reading partnerships; I heard about older children reading with the younger ones. Great stuff.
• On Monday 1 March we had our regular termly meeting for reading mentors. I always enjoy catching up with people who I do not see enough of. And this time we had a great presentation from Barrie from Barrington Stoke. He completely re-affirmed my love for their range of books. He showed us how everything is so carefully prepared; the covers, the font used, the editing process with young people, paper quality and all other aspects of the publishing system. It results in a perfect range of books. Check out one of their newest ranges, the Five Lords of Pain.
  
• On the day of World Book Day, Thursday 4 March, I was training a group of primary school staff to run their own Reading Matters volunteer reading mentors project in school. It is a nice session and I always get lots of new ideas.
• World Book Day itself has some great activities as usual, for example games and resources on their website. I was in my favourite book shop, Scarthin Books, at the weekend, they had a nice display of the current batch of £1 World Book Day books.
• Finally, I am preparing for a set of training courses this week and next. Getting a bunch of new mentors up-to-speed, and a bit of a refresher for longer-term mentors next week.

It is so good to be involved with all these fantastic activities, all Reading Matters mentors and trainees are always so enthusiastic and full of ideas and inspiration for getting children reading.