Eva Traven, OŠ Predoslje, Kranj
Home reading as part of Slovene language classes is regarded by many a pupil as a necessary evil and as something completely redundant. Despite the teachers effort to bring the home reading literature topics closer to the pupils, things are often reduced to copy-paste abstracts from the Internet, and poor assessment results, while the teacher is left with a bad feeling that he or she hadnt motivated the pupils enough for a particular book. It makes it vital that Slovene language teachers should make at least part of home reading attractive to the pupils. I have been trying for a number of years to test the last (out of four) home reading – taking place in the closing months of the school year, when the pupils are on the one hand under excessive stress due to working on their final marks, and already on holidays on the other hand – in an unconventional way. As part of the final Reading Badge ceremony, we invited a stand-up comedian and writer Boštjan Gorenc – Pižama, who has impressed the pupils with his latest book sLOLvenski klasiki (sLOLveninan Classic Writers), where he humorously presents the most well-known titles of the Slovene literary canon through the Internet modernity – from Facebook and Twitter to Bolha and online forums. Our pupils liked the idea to the extent that we have decided to create something similar by ourselves. I divided the pupils of the 8th class into small groups or pairs and presented a list of books that I considered to be suitable to be placed online in a similar way as the above-mentioned comedian had done. The pupils were of course first required to read a book, which was followed by going to our computer classroom and creating fictional profiles of literary heroes and their notes (more or less connected with the contents of the books) on »Facebook walls«. The pupils continued their work at home, stepping into the shoes of literary heroes, writing replies, sticking photos, commenting. With this contribution, I would like to present the results of our project and inspire others to launch an innovative approach to home reading. This contribution should belong into the framework of “Let’s put learning into pupils hands”, as the pupils were completely free to choose the book, the transformation medium and the method how to deal with the task in a creative and modern way. As added educational value, I consider a different approach, the work was fun, the pupils produced a vast number of ideas, and at the same time they were becoming aware of safety on the Internet and its traps.
