Oristano This year, about a hundred classes from compulsory schools visited the municipal library, with almost 2,000 students participating in the workshops organized by the Department of Public Education of the Municipality of Oristano. A more than positive assessment was drawn by the Councilor for Public Education Luca Faedda during a meeting with municipal officials and the cooperatives “Studio e progetto 2” and “La Lettura”, which manage the library services, as well as representatives of the city’s comprehensive institutes. “The library workshops were organized with a view to ever greater collaboration with the schools and teachers,” explained Councilor Faedda. “The strategic objective was to promote pleasure and curiosity about books and reading. The activities were free and took place every two weeks. Guided tours of the library were organized to discover the spaces, the books and their locations, readings and stories aloud, practical laboratory-type activities structured and designed based on the age of the participants.”
Of the 97 classes, 19 came from nursery schools, 49 from primary schools, 29 from lower secondary schools. The nursery school students were offered the workshop entitled “Book Friend” with visits, readings and creative workshops, to introduce the library as an attractive, warm, interesting place to visit and to transmit to even the youngest children the pleasure of listening to a story, thus inducing the pleasure of books and reading. Four workshops were reserved for primary schools: “Let’s save the planet” to raise awareness among fifth-grade students of respect for the environment; “Book Friend” to stimulate the pleasure of reading; “The library goes to school” for fourth- and fifth-grade children who were presented with various social themes through readings, stories and songs; “All the same, all different: Stories beyond stereotypes” to talk about stereotypes, respect for diversity and acceptance through books. Four workshops were dedicated to middle school: “A story with a thousand faces” to stimulate creativity, imagination, critical thinking and observation; “All the same, all different: Stories beyond stereotypes” to talk about stereotypes, respect for diversity and acceptance through books; “The ideal library” as a moment of discussion to understand what the library represents for today’s kids and how it has been represented in cinema and literature; “Free the pen that’s in you” to stimulate creativity and literary imagination. For Councilor Faedda, this is an initiative to be strengthened and repeated: “The project, in its first year of activity, served to educate students but even more to build a network of contacts and measure the interest of the city schools in these activities. The wide participation, enthusiasm and interest shown lead us to repeat the initiative in the coming years, taking advantage of the results of this first year and the many ideas expressed by teachers, students, as well as the library staff who curated it”.
