Scholastic Childrens Literacy Forum

The Scholastic Literacy Forum 2015, was launched in Delhi on 15th January 2015 at the Imperial Hotel.

Attended by several Principals and ' Reading Ambassadors' of schools, the forum offered a platform to help build a powerful national movement that supports literacy.

The event began with an introduction to the launch of this programme in India and the various activities provided by Scholastic in support of spreading literacy across the globe. Scholastic boasts of reaching 6,500 schools in India and thereby, 6 million readers!

The speaker highlighted research findings which indicate that reading is the foundation of academic success. Also how educators can help meet the challenges of 21st century-learners, even as they create a reading-culture that promotes independent reading practice and engages families.

He spoke of a reading programme with a plan of :-

Access to books, the first step in any literacy campaign.

Motivation by exercising choice in reading, which according to research increases reading achievement.

Family and community involvement.

Independent reading practice which helps children to be better readers .

Scholastic India offers various sessions to support reading, namely, Author sessions, Parent sessions, Teacher workshops, Book Talks etc

Interesting areas of work done by Scholastic include Helping schools build libraries with the help of Librarians' Meets, Professional Development resources, Interactive kids' corners, Scholastic writing awards for students, Teacher Training etc.

Mr. Shane Armstrong, President, Scholastic International shared the findings of US research on reading habits of children between the ages of 6 to 17 years. According to this study, in todays increasingly digital world 51% children read for fun, of these, 57% are girls and 45% are boys.

The reading frequency of children older than 8 years drops consistently as they have more to do and indulge in electronic games. The enjoyment of reading changes as they grow older.

Reading enjoyment declines after the age of 8 and once it drops it does not increase. Hence we need to develop the reading habit by the time the children reach 8 years of age.

Some factors that contribute to frequent reading, as per this research are Reading a book of choice, Access to a library, Knowing the reading level of the child and Reading aloud to children at home.

Often parents stop reading to children by the age of 6. Research findings show that children from 6 to 17 years want parents to continue reading aloud to them as it means more family time.

Grandparents often tell stories to their grand children which encourages the child to find more stories.

Independent reading motivates children to read more as children read by choice- books of their choice and it involves no testing. Kids who get to read books as per their reading level are likely to achieve reading success.

The read-aloud experience can be extended to the classroom as well. Teachers reading aloud small extracts from stories indirectly encourages students to find books to read.

The foundation of independent reading must be laid at school. In a majority of schools the opportunities of independent reading are never addressed.

Findings indicate that 80% children never read independently at school.

The findings of this study are startling and indicate that schools need to put in place measures to encourage reading commencing from the time students enter formal school. Teachers and parents must work hand in hand to ensure students enjoy reading and are inspired to read and have access to books.

Professor Harish Choudhary, IIT-Delhi spoke on Reading Trends in India, stating that Dads in India rarely read to their children. The ability of a reader does not make a reader.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.- Mark Twain

A panel discussion followed. It comprised the following panelists:-

Ms. Suman Kumar, Principal Blue Bells School, Ms. Deepika Kumar, Director MaxFort Schools, Ms. Urmilla Choudhary, Vice Principal La Martinere, Kolkata, Ms.Jaya Bhattarcharji, a columnist, associated with publishing, Dr. Raja Ram Sharma, Joint Director, CIET and Dr. Duria Aziz, moderator.

The passion of reading was obvious in some of these speakers who narrated incidents from their everyday lives. Dr. Raja Ram Sharma was critical of the NCERT and felt the text book should be thrown out of the classroom to create reading space.

An interesting question raised was Can Principals write? If they cannot write how do they expect teachers and students to write?

The attractive books displayed were must-haves for the Primary as a part of class libraries.

Reading corners, Open bookshelves, Read Aloud schemes, Independent reading, Silent reading, Reading out book extracts and Educating the parents about reading were practices named to encourage reading amongst children.

Ms. Neena Maini, Head Teacher, Primary.