Cape Town - The slogan “A reading child becomes a thinking adult” formed one of the key motivators behind this year’s World Read Aloud Day at Lotus River Primary School.
The day is commemorated annually on February 1 since it was established by non-profit organisation LitWorld in 2010.
Soft giggles erupted with hands quickly moving to cover faces as Grade 1 pupils followed with awe and interest the reading and enactment of The Mouse Who Ate The Moon by a human-sized mouse mascot inside the school’s Adventure Reading Room.
The initiative was facilitated by literacy organisation Living Through Learning (LTL) and partner Coronation, which has been involved in the promotion of literacy at the school for the past eight years.
LTL managing director Natalie Roos said: “We are the literacy partners of the school so we come in and we create magical Reading Adventure Rooms at the school, and we have our own curriculum that we integrate with the government’s curriculum to assist the pupils with their literacy.”
Roos said all pupils from its eight active Cape Flats schools – 7 578 children from Grade R to Grade 7 – read at the same time on Wednesday in commemoration of World Read Aloud Day.
Coronation CSI co-ordinator Tumelo Toolo said: “Foundation phase learning is something that is very important to us.
“Our biggest mission was to have kids read for meaning by Grade 4, and when we partnered with LTL as one of our literacy partners we thought this would be an amazing opportunity to partner with an organisation like them that is in our communities, telling our stories with our kids, and for us to really impact real change.”
LTL and Coronation have set up mobile libraries, brought in classroom facilitators to assist with reading and writing, and provided school feedings across 17 Western Cape schools.
Principal Tania Abrahams said Coronation and LTL had also assisted with wellness programmes for teachers. She said the school had an active reading culture.
“We have a library and each class has a library corner with books at the level of the pupils and books they can relate to,” Abrahams said.
“A reading child is a child who is going to become a thinking adult, and that is very important because it also teaches pupils how to be critical in their explanation … of comprehension that they will come across, and it also helps them in the intermediate phase where they need to read with understanding in order to answer questions verbally. and also in their writing capacity.”
Cultural Affairs and Sport MEC Anroux Marais encouraged the practice of reading aloud. A statement from her department read: “Research has shown that children who are read to, and who read, perform better at school, have improved concentration and memory, have wide vocabularies and show stronger comprehension skills.”