‘Unlock Your Superpower. Read!’

Not a single smartphone or tablet was in sight as students from Constant Spring Primary and Infant School, some dressed as their favourite literary characters, participated in a literacy fair held at the institution’s campus in St Andrew recently.

The event, spearheaded by the school’s literacy committee under the theme ‘Unlock Your Superpower. Read!’ featured a variety of educational and engaging activities, including storytelling sessions, live exhibitions, booth displays, spelling competitions, among others.

It was aimed at fostering a love for reading among students in an interactive way while also highlighting the importance of literacy in their overall academic success.

Organiser of the event and Literacy Coordinator at the school, Donna-Marie Phipps, told JIS News that the fair served to highlight the various aspects of reading and how to get students engaged.

“Our aim was to bring awareness to students that reading is not just sitting [down] with a book,” she said.

“We have students here who have done drawings from stories, they have role-played from stories, they have written alternative endings to stories. They have made items from stories that they have read and they are on display for parents and visitors to see,” she noted, citing the exhibitions at the various classroom booths.

MORE FUN AND ENGAGING

Among the students celebrating the joys of reading was grade-five student, Asia Escoffery, who was dressed as ‘Tiger Lily’ from Peter Pan.

“When I was at home, I acted out the character, and I really felt like I was actually the character,” she said.

Dressing up as a favourite book character makes reading more fun and engaging for children. It helps to foster imagination and creativity and build their confidence by expressing themselves through role-playing.

“If reading was interactive students would be reading every single day because they would learn new words and they would get smarter,” Asia said.

Sharing an example from a book she has read, she said in ‘Think Big’ there was a boy; he could not read, and his friends always made fun of him.

“So, what his mother did was she banned him from TV and sent him to the library to read books and make a book report about them and from that day on he read books every single day. His friends no longer mocked him and he became a very well-known doctor. So, if you read a lot of books, you can dream what you want to become,” she contended.

Asia said that “reading is important for students because once you read you understand the context of the subject”.

“So, if you are struggling with mathematics, you can simply just go to the library, and get a maths book and start reading the content, then you will start to understand the problems,” she added.

‘MAKE THE CHARACTERS COME ALIVE’

The Literacy Fair was met with widespread praise from parents who attended.

Kurtis Boothe, who has two children enrolled in the infant and grade-three programmes, said that he welcomes the school’s focus on reading, which he noted “widens their vocabulary and helps them to understand well”.

Boothe, in acknowledging the role of parents in the teaching and learning process of their children, recommended that parents introduce interactive reading in their homes to pique their children’s interest in reading.

“Kids at a young age are very imaginative so, if [parents] can make the characters come alive [students] will be more engaged and have fun doing it… and will actually remember and learn from it,” he pointed out.

He reminded parents about the importance of engaging their children in reading from an early age.

“Reading will impact their lives because, for the majority of [people] in our society [who] don’t read very well, it’s because from a tender age they weren’t put in the place or given the help to move forward in their reading,” Boothe contended.

‘BECOME EXCELLENT LEADERS IN SOCIETY’

Principal of Constant Spring Primary and Infant School, Shay Dillon, expressed pride at the event’s success, noting that the literacy fair aligns with the school’s long-term vision of enhancing academic achievement.

“Basically, we would have recognised that many of our students are not reading at their grade levels, and so we wanted to spark their interest in reading,” he said.

“What we really want to achieve today is for our students to be more interested in reading. We want our students at this school to be reading at their grade levels. We want them to be exiting grade six doing very well in terms of accessing the curriculum, being able to read, decode words and basically to become excellent leaders in society.”

The school’s literacy committee will continue efforts to foster a reading culture and provide students with the tools they need to become confident and skilled readers.

The literacy fair was supported by several entities, including Jamaica Information Service (JIS), Jamaica Library Service (JLS), Registrar General’s Department (RGD), NCB Foundation, Kingston Bookshop, and Member of Parliament for St Andrew North Central, Karl Samuda.