The Reading Challenge
The Reading Challenge is a massive reading promotion, programmed for children and young people in the UK. It is the most acclaimed and exciting children’s reading programme conceptualized by The Reading Agency in collaboration with the Arts Council England and the BBC and now runs in libraries and schools all over the world.
The British Council, Kolkata with the support of the Department of Arts and Culture, Government of Meghalaya and the Bookmark Sahaki, Shillong converted the rooms at the State Central Library, Shillong Exhibition Hall into classrooms. It was a showcase of various fun filled exercises to gift the joy of reading to the children from Class 1 to Class 8. It was not about being the best, it was about enjoying a fun way of learning, using words as an exercise to remember in speaking, writing, and reading. The young children from the various schools of Shillong participated in the workshops of promoting a reading culture in the Scotland of the East, where before every alphabet as they read every alphabet is interpreted clearly and analyzed.
The Reading Challenge programme encourages 300 selected school children from Shillong to participate in reading of at least six books from a collection of popular fiction titles procured by the library especially for this programme and the workshop was designed to get kids to express more.
“The aim of the challenge is to get children to not just read a wide variety of books. It is to teach participants the basics of characterization, setting and plot. As a part of the workshop the children will be given the first few sentences of a story that they have to complete. They would be encouraged to explore the creative corner of their minds and complete the story as innovatively as possible” as mentioned by Ms. Megha Roy representative of British Council.
The participants have to read the six books of which, on completing the challenge successfully, will receive a certificate and all exceptional performers will be rewarded at a public ceremony at the Shillong CALM Festival 2015 on 13 May, 2015. Whether the child is just beginning to pick up books, or is an avid reader already, the Reading Challenge hopes to fire up the young minds imagination within Meghalaya.
