False Bay College Muizenberg invited FunDza to spend time with their Level 2 students this year in celebrating World Read Aloud Day on 16 February. We are fortunate to have an ongoing relationship with three False Bay College campuses where we run ‘Reading for Enjoyment’ campaigns.
This year we decided to debunk some myths about reading being boring for young people by chain reading one of our most popular stories, The Playa, written by Sonwabiso Ngcowa.
Students were given the first few chapters and asked to read a few paragraphs. We scrunched a piece of paper into a ball and used that as a tool for the reader to select a fellow classmate to pick up where he/she had left off by tossing the ball to that person.
We also asked students to participate in a classic FunDza favourite where we stopped randomly and students were encouraged to speculate and discuss what they thought would happen next.
We also read the first paragraph from Wise Owl – a recent story addition to the FunDza mobi site. Many of the students who had claimed that reading was boring, didn’t want us to stop, mainly because they could relate to the characters in the story from the onset.
World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words and creates a community of readers taking action to show the world that the right to literacy belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day is celebrated by millions of people in more than 100 countries – spreading the love of reading and encouraging reading for enjoyment. The project was created in 2010 with a simple goal in mind; connecting the world through reading a story out loud. From its humble beginnings, the day is now celebrated worldwide and FunDza was excited to be involved in our little corner of Cape Town.
If you want to read The Playa by Sonwabiso Ngcowa, click here. To read Wise Owl by Tracey Farren, click here.