The Grade 2s - 7s participated in World Read Aloud Day 2022

  

Today was World Read Aloud Day and we celebrated this in my Grade 2 – 7 ICT classes at school with Nali’bali. We downloaded Nal'ibali's #WRAD story,  A Party in the Park, on our Chromebooks, and we all read together in unison. Then we discussed the story in the form of an oral book review. The children loved it. 

Nal'ibali aimed to get 1 million families to pledge their family to read aloud the Nal'ibali special story on World Read Aloud Day 2022 - 2 February. If only parents could realise and embrace the importance of regular reading in brain development – if only they could see the big picture about this. They would then definitely make reading aloud to children a daily priority!

The importance of reading aloud to children

Here are some useful quotes from articles and studies about the importance of reading aloud to children: 

“Reading regularly with young children stimulates optimal patterns of brain development, which helps build strong pathways in the brain and in turn builds language, literacy, and social-emotional skills that can have life-long health benefits.”
- from '‘Reading to young children develops their brains.'   https://bit.ly/3KYQnxr 

"A child care provider reads to a toddler. And in a matter of seconds, thousands of cells in these children’s growing brains respond. Some brain cells are ‘turned on,’ triggered by this particular experience. Many existing connections among brain cells are strengthened. At the same time, new brain cells are formed, adding a bit more definition and complexity to the intricate circuitry that will remain largely in place for the rest of these children’s lives.

Therefore, the more adults read aloud to their children, the larger their vocabularies will grow and the more they will know and understand about the world and their place in it, assisting their cognitive development and perception." (An excerpt from a study on toddlers’ cognitive development as a result of being read aloud to) - Quoted from:  https://www.all4kids.org/news/blog/the-importance-of-reading-to-your-children/

As we come out of the Pandemic, let's prioritise reading aloud to children in order to develop their reading skills. The long-term benefits are immeasurable.

Free reading sites to use on World Read Aloud Day – or anytime!

1 Feb, is World Read Aloud Day. Exciting reading activities are taking place all over the world. People all around the globe are reading aloud together and sharing stories on this day, to promote literacy as a human right that belongs to all people. It is important to celebrate days like these that put reading in focus. However, reading aloud to children should take place every day! In my previous blog post, Reading aloud to children - is it important? I wrote about what some of the research studies show about the importance of reading aloud to children.

Taken from the Nalibai site

Activities we will see happening on Read Aloud Day
Here are a few examples:

1. Some people create their own special one-on-one read aloud moment at school or at home. The Litworld website gives a read aloud guide that shows how to read to children effectively.
2. Many teachers connect virtually with authors, classrooms, and more for a special read aloud session using Skype.
3. Some classes around the globe read to each other via Skype.
4. Many websites such as KidLitTV have some read aloud sessions where children can watch people reading awesome children’s books.

Our World Read Aloud Day celebration in Grade 3
I am the computer teacher at my school, and my Grade 3 class celebrated World Read Aloud Day in the computer lab. In this post I want to tell you about some of the things we did on WRAD and show you some of the reading sites we visited.  

1. World Read Aloud Day with Nalibalihttps://nalibali.org/
Here in South Africa, Nal'ibali (isiXhosa for “here's the story”), a national reading-for-enjoyment campaign to spark children's potential through storytelling and reading, always does something great for World Read Aloud Day. Every year on World Read Aloud Day, Nalibali commissions a brand-new story and translates it into all 11 official SA languages. This year's story is "Where are you?" written by Ann Walton. It can be downloaded from their website free of charge.  Nalibali encourages adults and caregivers across the country, to join them in reading it aloud to children on WRAD (World Reading Aloud Day) They have called this the #WRADChallenge2019. 

We downloaded the story and read it together, aloud, in our computer lesson. 

After that the class visited a number of websites to see what they were about, and then they selected and read a story from one of the following sites, aloud. but softly!

2. The African Storybook website
https://www.africanstorybook.org/
This is a wonderful local website that has a huge amount of Grade R-4 beautifully illustrated Creative Commons picture storybooks that one can read, translate, change etc. I have done numerous activities using this website. The stories are in many different African languages - one simply has to choose English. The storybooks can be read online or offline, or downloaded from the website and printed. All the storybooks are available for free. The website is also available as an app that one can download. 

3. Storyweaver website

https://storyweaver.org.in/
This is a wonderful website from India that has a huge amount of Creative Commons beautifully illustrated stories. It works on similar lines to the African Storybook website in that the storybooks can be read online or offline, or downloaded from the website and printed. All the storybooks are available for free. They also focus on Indian languages but all one has to do is type in English for a large variety of lovely stories. The website was awarded a substantial grant from Google which enabled it to expand its storybase to 11,154 stories in 136 languages.

Both of the above story websites make use of four levels in reading:

Level 1: Easy words, word repetition, less than 250 words
Level 2: Simple concepts, up to 600 words
Level 3: Longer sentences, up to 1500 words
Level 4: Longer, more nuanced stories, more than 1500 words

4. Storyline online

https://www.storylineonline.net/
This is a popular children's literacy website created by the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, which provides free storytelling videos and resources for parents and teachers to foster a love of reading in children. The stories are nearly all, if not all, in the form of videos.

5. Litworld
https://kidlit.tv/category/read-out-loud/ This is a site I haven't used much yet, but I plan to explore it. LitWorld is a nonprofit organization founded by literacy expert Pam Allyn in 2007. LitWorld works with a broad coalition of national and international partners to ensure that young people worldwide can experience the joy and transformation of reading, writing, and storytelling.  They have an interesting approach in that their year-round, child-centered programming is designed to develop each of the 7 Strengths which LitWorld sees as inherent in every child. LitWorld’s 7 Strengths are: Belonging, Kindness, Curiosity, Friendship, Confidence, Courage, and Hope.

Studies show that one of the most important things we can do for our children, at home and at school, is to read aloud to them. The benefits are enormous when this becomes an ongoing practice. Why not make reading aloud to your class a daily habit? 

WRADSkype #4: World Read Aloud Day – my Grade 2 class participated!

This was so exciting! In the WRAD Skypathon I was paired up with a teacher, Janet Seifert, a 2nd grade teacher from South Elementary School in Newfoundland PA in the USA. Sadly our time differences of 7 hours precluded us from doing this as a Skype chat but what we decided to do was each make a video of our class reading to share with one another. .

It was very exciting when Janet sent along her Grade 2 video very professionally done by their technology coach, Michael Soskil.It was called, 'In the Snow'.




This is the video from our school of Grade 2 reading 'Eric: It's a piece of cake'.



Although our World Read Aloud project with the school in the USA is over, we are hoping to work together on a Flat Stanley project at a later stage.

WRADSkype #3: Making our video for World Read Aloud Day

This was quite a mission I can tell you!  Mrs Pena in Grade 2 was great! She had sourced a book on Fire because just at that time there were terrible fires around Cape Town and Fish Hoek, and people had to be evacuated in some suburbs.  The book was called ‘Eric it’s a piece of cake’. It was about a baboon and how he coped in the fires. Our area is well-known for baboons. The book was great. It was all in rhyme and very relevant to what was happening in real life.


So I went along to the Grade 2 class and videoed them taking turns to read the book on the mat.


Here is our final video

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WRADSkype #2: Sign up for World Read Aloud Day 2014 (on 4th March) with Nal’ibali and Gcina Mhlophe

Read aloud with Nal'ibali and Gcina Mhlophe

I was very excited to read about the upcoming World Read Aloud Day. This post appeared on the Nalibali site. Every year, World Read Aloud Day draws everyone’s attention to just how important reading aloud and sharing stories with children is. People all over the world spend time on this day celebrating the power of stories and building communities of readers.

This year World Read Aloud Day is being celebrated on 4 March 2015. Join us on this day and read a story especially written for us by South Africa’s best known storyteller, Gcina Mhlophe to children you know. Last year Nal’ibali called on South Africa to help set a read-aloud record and together we read aloud to nearly 50,000 children! This year we’d like even more of you to join us and read to children on this special day – and, of course, then continue reading aloud to them throughout the year.

How to join in:
On 4 March 2015, read our World Read Aloud Day story to:

• your own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews
• children in your class or at your school
• groups of children at your reading club, library, educare centre or community centre.

Download one of our World Read Aloud Day story kits below with the story, fun activities and a special World Read Aloud Badge for children to colour in – or read it online here.

• Download Sisanda’s gift in Afrikaans
• Download Sisanda’s gift in English
• Download Sisanda’s gift in isiNdebele
• Download Sisanda’s gift in isiXhosa
• Download Sisanda’s gift in isiZulu
• Download Sisanda’s gift in Sepedi
• Download Sisanda’s gift in Sesotho
• Download Sisanda’s gift in Setswana
• Download Sisanda’s gift in Siswati
• Download Sisanda’s gift in Tshivenda
• Download Sisanda’s gift in Xitsonga

You can read it online here on our website, OR on our mobisite here . You can also listen to Gcina Mhlophe reading the story in English, isiXhosa and isiZulu.

Signing up I would like to sign up one of the classes I teach on Wednesday 4th March. Perhaps the class that I have suggested for the World Read Aloud Day Skype would like to read this book as well. 

WRADSkype #1: I have signed up for World Read Aloud Day Skypathon 2015

I signed up for this World Read Aloud Day Skypathon on March 4th either with Grade 2, Grade 5 or Grade 6. Let's see what happens. Here is the gist of the post:

About this Skype lesson

We are looking for K-5 classes around the world to join us on March 4 for a World Read Aloud Day Skypathon.

When you sign up you will be paired with a partner class in another location. You and your partners will schedule a Skype call for March 4th with each other. Classes will take turns reading their favorite picture books to their partners. Afterwards you are free to ask questions of each other and get to know a bit about your new friends. The Twitter hashtag for this lesson will be #WRADSkype. Feel free to connect with others and share pictures about this Skypathon on Twitter.

We would like classes from all over the world will join us to grow cultural awareness and understanding as well as our reading skills. As an extension, we are hoping that many of the participating classes will be motivated to create their own stories and share them with the rest of us using the #WRADSkype hashtag on Twitter.

Our hope is to use this project to motivate students to read, write, and create their own stories to share with others for years to come. Please check the link below to sign up. We would love to have you join us as we celebrate the power of literacy by grabbing a book and reading aloud. If you would like more information and help in contacting classes let us know. We would love to help you start your own skypathon.

Registration will be open for this lesson until Friday, February 20th. You will be notified of your partner class’s information by Friday, February 27th. Once you receive that information, you can plan your Skype call for World Read Aloud Day on March 4th.

Register for this lesson here: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?page=survey&resid=6A03D066EBDBE2FC!874&authkey=!APYkJmwvPjmkquo&ithint=file%2cxlsx