Christiane White (left) from the 4-6 category receiving a prize from Founder of The Literacy Project, Tara Walcott and daughter, Kristen Walcott.
Zaina Moore (left) from the 7-10 category receiving her prize.
Founder of The Literacy Project, Tara Walcott, giving Derrica Babb from the 11-13 age category her prize.
Following the conclusion of the 2017 Summer Reading Challenge put on by The Literacy Project, Tara Walcott, founder of the project, noted that she was quite impressed by the response to the challenge.
Her comment came following the prize-giving ceremony, which was held at the Public Library in Bridgetown last Saturday morning.
“Basically, the participants had to read three books and write three book reviews and the age categories were four to 16 years old. We were looking for things like grammar; use of punctuation; and depths of thought – how deep have you gone into analysing your responses; as well as summary,” she said.
“Summary usually seems to be a challenging task for them, so that’s what they engaged in this summer. A team of us went through the submissions and we thought it fit to award some prizes in the various categories.”
The prize winners also got the opportunity to read their reviews out loud as Walcott believed it was important to get the children into the habit of vocalising, projecting their voices and speaking before audiences.
Walcott explained that The Literacy Project was founded out of a passion for developing young people in the area of reading and writing.
“We started with the National Library Service, so during their reading times on Saturdays,” she said.
“We don’t just read with the kids, we engage with the stories and ultimately end up writing. So before we finish the reading time, they would have written something and give feedback to the rest of the group.”
In addition to the reading times on Saturdays, she revealed that they also had a Summer Slide programme. She explained that research showed that during the two-month summer period, students actually lose some of the academic skills they learned while at school. As a result, Walcott noted that they encouraged the children to read for at least half an hour every day during their summer break, or play an educational online game, so that they do not lose the skills they gained during the school year. (CLF)