Indore (Madhya Pradesh): As schools reopened in the state after remaining shut for almost 18 months due to the pandemic, both students and teachers were found struggling to restart the learning process. With the struggle being serious as most students could not even read, the Department of School Education and Literacy, Government of India, is launching a 100-day reading campaign.
To promote reading among children, the 100-day reading campaign is being organised from January 2022 to April 2022. The campaign has been launched under the National Mission for Basic Literacy and Numerology through NIPUN-India. The mission aims at meeting the learning needs of children in the age group of 3 to 9 years.
Minister of state (independent charge) for school education Inder Singh Parmar will address the online orientation programme of teachers at the 100-day Reading Campaign. With a view to better implementation of the programme and to make it result-oriented, orientation of all the academic staff/officers posted in the district is being organised on a regular basis.
All the teachers posted in primary and secondary schools will be attending the programme and orientation that started on Thursday (January 6).
It was telecast live on YouTube Live from 3 pm. Principal secretary, school education department, Rashmi Arun Shami and senior officials of the state cited the importance of reading fluency among students.
The online program will be broadcast on the YouTube channel of the State Education Centre.
“Recognising the importance of elementary education, the National Policy on Education, 2020, emphasises that achieving universal basic literacy and numeracy in primary schools should be the top priority,” Parmar said. He added that it states that, if the most basic of education, that is, basic-level reading, writing and arithmetic is not acquired first, the rest of this policy will become largely irrelevant to a large portion of students.
“It is in this context that the Department of School Education and Literacy is launching a nationwide reading campaign, so that every child learns to read and then reads to learn,” Shami said. She added that, to inculcate the habit of reading lifelong in children, it is important that we make reading enjoyable and interesting.
“Therefore, an activity-based method of study is the most effective in making the reading experience exciting and enjoyable,” Shami said.
What will be happening in the Reading Campaign?
Weekly activities are marked, dividing the 100 days of the Reading Campaign into a total of 14 weeks. Realising the importance of the mother tongue, the child should get such opportunities so that his interest in reading can be awakened. In this context, 14 weeks of activities based on age have been made available to the schools in various languages. It covers various activities for Classes 1 and 2, for Classes 3 to 5 and for Classes 6 to 8, including storytelling.
