Cultivating a love for literacy
Summer reading program wraps up for another year
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This article was published 18/08/2014 (3531 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The summer reading program in Steinbach is one of the successful avenues being used to increase literacy rates in the Southeast. While the statistics on literacy are quite staggering, the program director at the Jake Epp Library has found ways to make reading fun and exciting.
There were over 600 children in the program, reading a lot of words for seven weeks of summer.
“It was an interesting summer,” said Tracey Pankratz. “We made a lot of changes and we tried to open up to more kids.”
Everything worked really well and Pankratz anticipates the program will run with even more ease next summer.
Although the program included a lot of fun and rewards for children, the greatest reward will be discovered later in life when these children find it easier to navigate through the adult words because of their higher level of literacy skills.
According to the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network, 42 percent of Canadian adults between the ages of 16 and 65 have low literacy skills. The CLLN also reports that impoverished adults often do not have the literacy skills required to get into job training programs. They may need literacy skills upgrading before they can succeed in training programs but only about five to 10 percent of eligible adults enroll in programs.
With literacy being a very important and serious aspect of life, Pankratz has used that understanding to push her creative juices to the maximum in coming up with new ways of drawing more people, especially children, into the library. The summer reading program is a great example of this effort.
Children have found the library to be a fun and entertaining place during the summer months where there has been laughter and smiles on young faces as their minds are opened to an infinite number of ideas and topics to explore. By taking such an important task and turning it into a fun experience, Pankratz and her team have made the library feel like home for hundreds of families.