AWESOME WAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD

World Read Aloud Day [#WRAD] is a special Day set aside to advocate for literacy as a human right and a powerful tool that should be accorded to everyone. It is celebrated globally on the first Wednesday in March every year. Reading is an awesome way to change the world.

This annual global movement in previous years has been celebrated by over 1 million people. This year representing Ambassadors for Development Network, I joined in celebrating the #WRAD as my contribution to encourage the power of words especially those passed down from a teacher to a pupil as it has a high tendency for lessons to be retained to adult hood.

Location

I marked this year’s #WRAD at Child Pride Preparatory School in Chikun Area of Kaduna Nigeria with a class of 20 preschool children.  

ACTIVITIES

Revision

I started with the children chorusing lessons they already knew like the alphabets, numbers 1-50 and about 5 common poems they knew. I scored them a 100% for this as participation was very high amongst every one of them.

Lessons Taught

After finding out that just about half the class had started brushing their teeth themselves, I decided to teach them a very short poem that guided me on a proper way to brush my teeth while I was in preschool. It goes thus:

“Brush your teeth, everyday

Up and down

Side by side

Brush your teeth, everyday

Once in the morning

Once in the night.”

It took approximately 30 minutes for all of them to learn this.

As I discovered it was difficult to retain the attention of children at that age for very long, I had to use a picture book and a story from my laptop to capture their attention. I shared with them a story titled “New day new friends” courtesy of Litworld’s online tools to aid #WRAD activities.

I was really entertained with lots of amusing questions at the end of my story telling but I was glad I answered them all as they all kept asking “aunty will you come again tomorrow?”

We took photos together at the end of it and distributed few learning tools to encourage active participation in learning activities.

It was a fun filled and memorable day for us all as we not only raised our voices together but it also showed the children that there are people out there who support their future and their right to read, write and share their words to change the world.