National Program to Mark the National Reading Month October 31th 2008, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka Lionel R. Amarakoon, FLA(S.L);FCILIP(U.K.);PGD in IR;Dip in HRD(India) Program Manager (RR), Room to Read Sri Lanka lionelorama@gmail I. Introduction A country such as Sri Lanka can progress economically, socially and culturally only if its citizens equip themselves with a good education and ethical values. Literacy is the foundation of a developed society, and promoting the reading habit among people is a key factor that will help the achievement of this goal. Though Sri Lanka once ranked as a country having one of the highest literacy rates among Asian countries, recent statistics reveal that the reading habit among Sri Lankans has dropped significantly. To reverse this trend, effective and meaningful measures have been taken by NLDSB and other relevant institutions specially with the intention of promoting the reading habit and improving the intellectual capacity of the nation. On the initiative of the National Library and Documentation Services Board and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Government declared the month of October as the National Reading Month in 2004, with the objective of encouraging the public in reading and information searching. “Where there is literacy, there is increased economic opportunity; where there is literacy; public health and well being of the people improves; and where there is literacy, the dreams of our children can become a reality”. The National Reading Month program is specified as a significant event in the educational and cultural calendar of the island, although the literacy rate for Sri Lanka is fairly high. Room to Read Sri Lanka believes that ‘World Change Starts with Educated Children’ . Reading is one of the key components in any ones success in education. Education is not just passing examinations or obtaining certificates. Education is a process which facilitates the development of a person in every aspect in their life-the Total Personality. If we really want to make this happen, we should make sure that children are motivated to read and explore the new knowledge. This is one of the objectives of the National Reading Month. As an organization highly valued reading and proactively promotes reading among children we join hands with the National Library and Documentation Services Board to organize the events connected with the month with a great passion. With the aim of creating an interest in Sri Lankans to read and to seek for information, on the request of the National Library and Documentation Services Board, the then GOSL declared the month of October as the ‘National Reading Month’ in the year 2004. From that year onwards each year in the month of October NLDSB and the GOSL have been conducting programs of different intensities, embracing all the academic sphere of the country to coincide with the ‘National Reading Month’. This event was held on a grand scale this year with the financial and technical support of the Room to Read Sri Lanka. ‘Enriching the life through reading’ and ‘bringing prosperity to the land through the creation of an intelligent society’ are the objectives prioritized for emphasis this year. II. Activities Holding competitions in photography, poster designing, short story writing, conducting seminars at provincial level and presenting books to libraries were some of the events included in the National Reading Month’s celebrations this year. 1. Poster competition Proposed Themes: “Let’s conquer the universe through reading”, “Read to lighten your way”, “Today’s reader tomorrow’s a leader”. The competition was held in two levels; all island open level and school level competition. 2. Photograph competition. Proposed Theme: “ Reading and Information Searching” 3. Book to Book Campaign The rationale for this project is maximizing the usage of the scholastic donations by collecting as much as local language books for the libraries established by Room to Read and also donating the advanced English Fiction which are less appropriate to our rural libraries to more appropriate institutions. Under this project a particular school or an institution can donate local language books (Sinhala and Tamil) to the Reading Rooms that had been established by Room to Read and receive the Scholastic English Children’s fiction by Room to Read Sri Lanka. A list of international and government schools had been selected for this. So far Room to Read had donated nearly 5710 Scholastic English Children’s Fiction and collected 5112 local language books for Room to Read libraries. This will be an ongoing project under the Reading Room program. 4. Reading Habits Development Camp It has been observed that reading habits of children is at a low level and more and more children are addicted to electronic media. This is a main factor affecting the language skills of children. As a result of this children will not have positive attitudes, life skills, and their social values are being degrading. The following are the factors which is directly affecting the level of reading habits of Sri Lankan children: No time to read, no habit of reading, non-availability of good children’s books, no proper guidance and other factors such as negative effect of TV and tuition classes on children. If we are to remedy this situation one of the very effective method that we can adopt in such a situation is to organize many “Reading Habits Development Camps” . Children learn best when they are naturally interested. One way to get them interested in learning how to read in any language is to use an interesting story. Most of young children like stories. They will listen to a good story several times, and this way they gradually learn the words, the grammatical structures, and the language of the story. Therefore many teachers and parents help their children to learn to read, by reading to them, from an interesting story, by talking about the story, and following up with some activities taken from the story. This way children seem to learn quickly, and enjoy the process. Hence, we conducted a Reading Habits Development Camp in Anuradhapura with the following objectives in mind. - To develop the reading habits and skills of school children - Get children’s attention to printed media We invited 350 children to participate in this national event (including 50 children of (Vedda) indigenous people from Dambana, Mahiyangana. Resources used: Physical Resources used A set of local language books published by Room to Read and few Scholastic Books. Children do not like all kinds of books. They do not like books that are too difficult, or that deal with subjects that are not interesting to them. They do not like long books, that have lots of small print, and no pictures. They do not like books that have long sentences and many unfamiliar words. Most of young children do enjoyed books which had some or all of these features: - Have a good story, where something interesting happens, or a problem is solved. - Have attractive pictures, that they enjoy looking it. - Use language they understand, without too many unknown words. - Arouse their feelings, through humor, fantasy, excitement, wonder, surprise - Have characters they can identify with. E.g. Children, animals, heroes. - Can be read in one short session Human Resources Services of 04 RECEP Supervisors( Reading Competencies Enrichment Program Supervisors) (formerly know as BOBLEP(Book Based Language Enrichment Program ) were obtained. Methodology adopted to conduct the shared Reading Session at Reading Camp The Shared Reading Method was the main teaching method used in the above reading camp. In this method, the RECEP supervisor shared a suitable story book (or poem, or non-fiction book), with a group of children. “Sharing a story” means reading it together. First the teacher read the book aloud, while children watch the words on the pages, and listen. Next time, the children joined when they can. Then the teacher used the same storybook to develop interesting learning activities for the children to undertake. The aim was to help children learn the language of that book. This method was ideal for teaching all four language modes at once-reading, writing, speaking and listening. Follow up activities for Shared Reading at the Reading Camp Since the children enjoyed the stories, they learned the language of the book readily. These activities helped them to enjoy and learn at the same time. Dramatize the story Most children liked acting the parts or characters of the story. They pretended to be lions, or giants, or old men, or whatever the story requires. The children make the noises and actions appropriate to the characters. For some stories, children did a simple role play, of one or two characters, without much preparation. Retold the story in their own words Some children were confident enough to retell the story to the whole group gathered in the camp. Others told parts of it to a small group. This is a good practice for public speaking. Rewrite the story Children like to rewrite the story, in pairs or groups. Sometimes the words and pictures will be exactly the same as the book, but sometimes they can change it, with different characters, or different contexts, or different endings. It would be wise to discuss it with the group first. Suggestions could be written on the Black Board. Need to display the finished work. Unfortunately children didn’t have much time to rewrite the stories they heard during the camp Date and Time 2008 Oct 31 from 8.30 a.m. to 12.15 p.m. Venue: NYSC – Yovun Nikethanaya, Anuradhapura. III. The main ceremony The main ceremony for the National Reading Month was held at the NYSC Youth Centre, Anuradapura on 31th of October 2008 from 2.00 p.m onwards under the chairmanship of Governor of the North Central Province Mr. Karunratrne Divulgane. Hon. Berty Premalal Dissanayake, Chief Minister of North Central Province and HE Robert ‘O’ Blake, Ambassador of USA to Sri Lanka were the Guest of Honors on this occasion. Participants Apart from the North Central Province Governor, HE Robert ‘O’ Blake, Ambassador of USA, the Chairman of the National library Mr. E.A. Samarasinghe, The Director General of the National Library and Documentation Services Board Prof. M.K. Weerasingha, Assistant Manager of Bank of Ceylon Mrs. A. R. G. V. S. Gunathilake, the Head of the Library Science Department of the University of Kelaniya Prof. Piyadasa Ranassinghe, Mr. Herath School Library Coordinator Provincial Ministry of Education, Anuradhapura and the competition winners, invitees of Room to Read Sri Lanka and the National Library were also among the participants to the program. Agenda of the Day for the main function 2.00 p. m Lighting of the Oil Lamp 2.05 p.m. Cultural item by children from the heritage school, Dambana, Sri Lanka sponsored by the Room to Read. 2.30 p.m. Welcome address- Mr. E. A. Samarasinghe, chairman, National Library Documentation and Services Board 2.40p.m. Address by the Guest of Honor, Hon. Karunarathne Diulgane, Governor – North Central Province 3.00p.m. National Reading Month-An Introduction by Prof. W.M.M.K. Weerasinghe, the Director General of the National Library 3.15p.m. Address by the representative of the Bank of Ceylon 3.30p.m. Presentation of awards of the Poster/Photograph competitions 3.45p.m. Address by the Guest of Honor – Hon. Berty Premalal Dissanayaka Chief Minister – North Central Province 4.00p.m. Presentation of awards of the Short Stories Competition 4.20p.m. Address by the Guest of Honor, HE Robert ‘O’ Blake, Ambassador of USA 4.35p.m. Address by the Country Director Room to Read Sri Laka – Glenfrey de Mel 4.50p.m. Vote of thank 5.00p.m. Tea IV. Outcomes of the program and Lessons learnt Room to Read Sri Lanka received a greater opportunity to collaborate with the National Library and the School Library Development unit of the Ministry of Education, as a result of the National Reading Month Program 2008. The visibility of Room to Read as a pioneering educational infrastructure providing NGO, was evident to the National Library bodies and also to the educational sector in Sri Lanka through the paper advertisements and etc which in return will be a greater advantage in implementing the programs in the future. This was the 2nd time that Room to Read Sri Lanka collaborated with a government library bodies at a national level program. May be next year we need to think of our own activities in connection with the National Reading Month celebration. It is advisable for us in Sri Lanka to organize a National Reading Year for 2010. We need to collaborate with the National Library, MoE, NIE and Sri Lanka Library Association (SLLA) and other stakeholders regarding the “National Reading Year 2010”.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:42:35 +0000
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