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2021 awards and milestones celebrating early literacy achievements

If anything, 2021 has been a more challenging year than 2020 for early literacy in the global South. But as with 2020, this year – with all its pandemic-related setbacks – has also seen a lot of innovation and the sharing of ideas.

Making reading aloud together part of our lives in 2022

Read

First, children learn to read. Once they have worked through this important series of milestones, they start reading to learn. Somewhere, in between, they should also be encouraged to read for pleasure.

NBA and AfLIA are sharing info about the creation of their course on early literacy development

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Much like us at the Early Learning Resource Network, you were probably engrossed in all the World Literacy Day webinars, tweets, blog posts and project launches that flooded the social-media timelines on 8 September.

27 July 2020

Early literacy and Leblango: A fascinating learning journey for Uganda’s Mango Tree Literacy Lab

Early literacy is universally acknowledged to be critical when it comes to the education and development of our children, and their life-long learning. But even in countries where the home language is not a Western language, early literacy teaching is not in that language. This is unfortunate as research shows that children learn to read more effectively if they learn in their mother tongue. Since its inception in 2010, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Lira, Uganda, the Mango Tree Literacy Lab (MTLL), has worked hard to address this, and to realize their belief that African children have the right to read, write and engage with ideas in a language they know and understand.

01 July 2020

Little scribes with big stories: Tanzania’s Soma Book Cafe introduces its youngest authors

Kalamu Ndogo (Little Scribes) is a new book series written by children for children under the auspices of the Soma Book Café Watoto na Vitabu (Children and Books) storytelling hub and Saturday children’s programme. This is a space for children between the ages of six and 13 to hone their reading and storytelling skills. The series is a product of experimental work on how to facilitate children to research and write original stories inspired by Tanzanian storytelling traditions. These stories are also informed by how the children experience contemporary realities and their aspirations beyond the here and now.

01 June 2020

A Book Dash with a difference: How three open-source books were created in one day during the National lockdown

As part of their efforts to ensure that every child should own 100 books before the age of five, South African non-profit organization (NPO), Book Dash, recently did a remarkable thing: It created, published and distributed three new books during the national lockdown.

The organization gathered two teams of creative professionals who volunteered to pilot this new virtual Book Dash. Then, making the most of their learning from the past 14 physical events, Book Dash successfully replicated the experience online, with some adjustments.

24 May 2020

Dr Nkem Osuigwe speaks to the COVID-19 pandemic, AfLIA and African librarians

Guest blog by Dr Nkem Osuigwe, Human Capacity Development & Training Director, AfLIA

13 May 2020

How to help children learn and enjoy reading, even when schools are closed

Schools may be closed, but children can continue to learn and enjoy reading storybooks during this difficult period. We’ve told you about wonderful places to identify good storybooks in previous blog posts.

In this post, we’re going to tell you about resources for parents and caregivers who want to help their children with learning and reading.

23 April 2020

How do we adapt the way we teach and learn in a lockdown world?

How do teachers and parents cope with the challenges of educating their children in uncertain times, while acknowledging resource limitations and avoiding cut-and-paste solutions, and copyright infringements.

09 April 2020

Sitting out the coronavirus at home with our children and reading a good story

Now that so many of us are locked down and locked in because of COVID-19, it is the time to explore the virtual world of children’s stories – all free to read and all openly licensed. A few great platforms are listed below:

African Storybook

10 February 2020

All children deserve stories about themselves

In February we celebrate World Read Aloud Day (5 February) and International Mother Language Day (21 February).

Here are some links to find openly licensed storybooks and reading resources to read aloud in some of the 7,000 living languages:

22 November 2018

Sub-Saharan Publishers' experiment with open licensing

Meet Akoss Ofori-Mensah of Sub-Saharan Publishers. She is working with Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) to research the impact of open licensing on publishing business models by sharing books in underserved local Ghanaian languages. Akoss says she agreed to this work because she wants to understand how open licensing works and:

…its benefits to children; especially allowing them to read stories in their own mother tongue.

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