The Tema Metropolitan Education Directorate, has organized its 2022 reading festivals for lower primary pupils in the metropolis with the ArchBishop Andoh Basic School, emerging as winners.
The school was adjudged the winner after getting a total point of 177.5 from three rounds of reading sessions, while St. Peter Roman Catholic Basic had a total of 115.5 points to emerge second, and Manhean SDA Primary, placing third with 111 points.
The winners and participants received certificates of participation and various reading materials for their outstanding performance.
The reading festival is a nationwide initiative by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with USAID and fhi360.
The 2022 festival is on the theme: “Learn to Read, Read to Learn.”
It was designed to stimulate interest in reading books and help promote a reading culture through the reading of short stories, answering comprehension questions, and spelling competitions, among others.
Mrs. Bernice Ofori, Tema Metropolitan Education Director, who opened the reading festival, urged parents and guardians to collaborate with teachers and school administrators to develop the reading skills of their children.
Mrs Ofori urged parents to buy reading materials for the children, adding however that those who could not do so due to financial challenges could encourage their wards to make use of library facilities in their schools and communities to read and learn.
She said the need for children to adopt reading skills was important as learning how to read was a necessity, adding however that even though some children found reading easy there was still the need to practise as oral language was the solid foundation on which literacy was built.
She added that it was important for teachers and educators to ensure that learners received help at the right stage of life to learn how to read and write through continuous development for it to have a positive effect on their academics and self-esteem.
Mrs Ofori said the first years of schooling were designed for children to learn reading through their phonetic awareness skills comprising of alphabetic code, and memorization of basic sight words, among others.
She advised children to make books their best friends as well as to cultivate the habit of reading and learning as the more they read, the more knowledgeable they would be.
