Literacy Month in Junior School

Junior School students celebrated Literacy Month this September. Head of Student Support and Well-being for the Junior School, Peter Muraguri, tells us more.

During the month of September, the entire Junior School community was engaged in a range of activities to celebrate Literacy Month. All our activities were aimed at encouraging our students to spend more time reading and writing as a way of exploring the world, expressing their thoughts and most importantly having fun.  Our literacy Month activities included dual-language inter-house spelling bee and read-aloud sessions for English and Swahili stories. Students had a chance to explore different literary genres during their library lessons.  Our Grade 4 students also thrilled us with a well-choreographed enactment of Lupita Nyong’o’s story Sulwe. 

The most active students on Raz Kids and Literacy Planet were recognized and awarded certificates. Raz Kids and Literacy Planet are online platforms which are empowering English language educators and students in classrooms and homes all over the world. These award-winning ed-tech resources give our students a unique opportunity to enhance their literacy skills as they engage with top-of-the-range, stimulating and self-paced literacy activities. 

As a school, we are committed to building in our students a strong and enduring reading culture that goes beyond Literacy Month.  As key stakeholders, we believe our parents have a central role to play and we really aspire to involve them fully on this journey. That is why we organized a training session for parents on how Raz Kids and Literacy Planet work. Parents had a chance to explore the two amazing digital resources and they are now better equipped to support their children at home.

Following the great enthusiasm generated by our inter-house spelling bees, and in response to student and parent feedback, the Junior School leadership has decided to make the spelling challenge a regular event. We are looking forward to partnering with our newly elected SRC to make our spelling bee student-led and even more fun!