Launch of Highland Reading Blog

A new initiative to help children to share reading experiences with each other across the region was launched today (Thursday). A blog (hlpreadingblog.edublogs.org) has been designed to allow children to submit reviews of books. This blog ties in directly to the ‘Reading for Enjoyment’ component of the Highland Literacy Project.

Pupils from Coulhill Primary, Alness, Raigmore Primary, Inverness, Marybank Primary, and Strathgarve Primary attended the launch at Borders Bookshop, Inverness. 

Borders have agreed to support this blog in a number of ways by providing two books each month for a selected school to review and post on the ‘Borders Book of the Month’ section. A randomly selected reviewer will be given a book voucher as an additional incentive to post quality reviews. Borders are also in the process of setting up a scheme where they will be offering 10% discount to all children who print off a voucher which will be displayed on the blog. Additionally, a small section of the shop will be dedicated to promoting the blog and the Highland Literacy Project. This will hopefully include displaying printed off reviews as well as multiple copies of the Borders Books of the Month so that children across the region who have read a review can very easily buy this book.

The blog has been piloted informally over the past few weeks. The children log on using a general username a password and can then do two things.
1. Read an existing review and post their thoughts/review as a comment or
2. If a review has not been produced for a book, they can create a new ‘post’ which allows them to enter their review.

All comments have to be moderated before they go ‘live’ so there is no chance of any inappropriate language etc slipping through the net. Each school has a ‘step by step’ guide to posting on the blog.

The Highland Literacy Project is hopeful that this will be a very successful way of engaging pupils in sharing their love and interest in reading. A key part of the HLP approach is to make reading more meaningful. The big hope for this blog is that children can share their thoughts on a book (either individually, as a group or as a whole class) in a more interesting and stimulating way.