"Reading is a boundless childhood adventure."

This quote from Astrid Lindgren succinctly describes what the Osnabrück Public Library is all about with its reading promotion project "Ausgefuchst - clever kids and cool books," which it developed together with two dedicated teachers from Heiligenweg School and is sponsored by the Friedel & Gisela Bohnenkamp Foundation. In the age of smartphones, tablets and the like, it's not always easy to get children excited about books. There are no pictures flickering across the pages, you can't click on anything and there are no sounds either. But maybe sometimes it just takes someone to open the door to this "boundless adventure" for children. It's all about the fascination that comes from books and the deep effect that reading can have. Over the course of an entire school year, the children in grades 2c and 3c at the Heiligenweg School in Osnabrück receive stimuli about books and reading in addition to their regular lessons. The municipal library uses the entire range of media: Picture books, stories for children, non-fiction, magazines, audio books and also games. The starting point for all the activities is the children's strengths: their curiosity, their eagerness to experiment and, not least, the diversity of their languages of origin. The children will embark on an exciting journey into the world of books - reading technique, text comprehension, attention, imagination and vocabulary will be promoted almost incidentally. But stories do even more: those who discuss the feelings and decisions of protagonists in a story also learn to better classify their own feelings and to critically question their own actions. The project is accompanied and evaluated by two students from the university. All experiences will be documented so that the project can later be implemented at other elementary schools in the city of Osnabrück.

The children should develop fun with books and enjoy reading. They should be enabled to read meaningfully and become confident in the German language. In this way, they can make the best possible use of the great potential that their multilingualism represents. After all, the cultural technique of reading is the basis of communication in our writing-based society: the world is open to those who master it.

Reading and reading comprehension are at the forefront of the project and are to be promoted significantly. Through imaginative concepts developed especially for the target group, which always focus on a specially selected book, the children are encouraged to engage with the books without shyness and with a lot of fun. In doing so, the questions, wishes and suggestions of the children and also of the teachers can be flexibly addressed. The reading impulses provided by the Osnabrück Public Library stimulate all the senses to suit every type of learner.

The school lessons, various reading formats of the Osnabrück Public Library and different reading activities in the free time are coordinated with each other: Once a week during school hours, a special program takes place for classes 2c and 3c of the Heiligenwegschule within one school hour. This involves not only the municipal library and the bookmobile, but also various cooperation partners from the field of reading promotion, such as the Lesewelt association, the storyteller Sabine Meyer, Stefanie Scholze, advisor for reading promotion from LiesA - Lesen ist ein starker Anfang (Reading is a strong start) and the VPAK - Verein zur pädagogischen Arbeit mit Kindern aus Zuwandererfamilien (Association for educational work with children from immigrant families). The school classes receive intensive on-site support in the classroom, but also regularly come to the municipal library at the Markt to take part in author encounters and class tours. The public library's bookmobile stops at regular intervals directly in the schoolyard of the elementary school on Heiligenweg and is a permanent reading fodder supplier for the students, where the children will complete tasks and participate in a wide variety of activities. The VPAK is represented at the school by the after-school program Schinkelkids. Children who attend the open all-day program participate there in a weekly AG on multilingual books. The Lesewelt association is also available every Monday at 4:30 p.m. at the neighboring Heinz-Fitschen-Haus children's, youth and family center to offer other book-related activities. The fact that reading is a part of life is made clear by this "triad" of actors: stories can be found everywhere for children, whether at school, at the extracurricular learning location of the city library or as part of leisure activities.

Contact person:

Lucie Kleiner

Osnabrück City Library, Markt 7, 49074 Osnabrück, phone 0541/323-3465, e-mail: kleiner(at)osnabrueck.de