Classroom Full Of Children Reading Quietly Coloring Page

Four children are reading at their desks, arranged across two rows. In the back row a boy on the left holds a book up in both hands and a girl with a ponytail reads on the right. In front, a girl with a wide hair bow stands beside her desk with a book clutched against her, and a boy in a headband sits with an open book flat in his hands. Three of them have their eyes on the page; the girl standing keeps her book closed and looks straight ahead. Behind them a large whiteboard is mounted on the wall, framed and fixed at the corners, and left completely empty. Rows of unoccupied desks and chairs fill the whole foreground.

The empty whiteboard is the obvious invitation. Write the lesson on it before coloring, or leave it blank as the quietest part of the picture.

All those empty desks are large flat shapes and go down quickly, which balances the detail in the four figures.

The title promises a full classroom and there are four children in it. The rest of the desks are waiting if anyone wants to draw the other twenty.

Sustained silent reading was built into American school timetables from the 1960s onward, on the simple theory that the single best predictor of reading well is time spent reading.