Unesco’s World Book and Copyright Day on 23rd April each year is celebrated to promote reading and the enjoyment of books everywhere.
Reading for pleasure in childhood is the biggest indicator of future success, and is more important than the parents’ educational background or income. The benefits of children reading for enjoyment include improved vocabulary, empathy skills and mental health as well as improvements in all school subjects.
Helping children to read well enough to read for pleasure is the highest goal of Book Village. At the beginning of this year we conducted formal assessments of all the grade 2 and 3 learners at the low-income school we are working in. Our results show that very few children are reading at the expected level for their age (about 12% in grade 2 and 8% in grade 3), and we think that we would get similar results if we tested children in most low-income schools in South Africa.
But we have noticed improvements in many areas since the beginning of the year. Children who could read enough to start on the most simple level of the reading scheme (Aweh! By Oxford University Press) began lessons with the volunteer tutors in February this year. These children have already grown in confidence and improved their reading, vocabularies and memories. They are also getting the hang of paying attention to what they’ve been reading and thinking of creative and solid answers to the tutor’s questions.
Every time a child logs in to the Book Village app they are certain to have a motivated, patient and kind person fully devoted to helping them read for the next 20 minutes – and they love it! The children benefit from the diversity of our volunteer tutors, their unique styles and varied takes on the story in the book.
Book Village isn’t trying to solve for a lack of books and reading material in low-income areas. There are several organisations that do incredible work in providing books to young children. Book Dash and Nal’ibali are two great places to access free books and stories for young South African children. Instead, Book Village is about bringing the human connection back into the learning to read process by allowing every child to learn with the help of their own online tutor.
This World Book and Copyright day, consider becoming a Book Village Volunteer. The more volunteer tutors we have, the more children we can help. Just think – while you have a 20 minute coffee break at your desk you could be teaching a child to read and develop a life-long habit of reading for enjoyment.
