The Minister for Education Evarist Bartolo has launched officially the Aqra Kemm Tiflah programme for the early primary school years, which he described as “another initiative of the National Literacy Strategy for All in Malta and Gozo.”

This was done symbolically by lighting a Christmas Book Tree which displays some of the large number of high-appeal and attractive reading and information books which will be distributed in primary schools.

Minister Bartolo said that it is not enough to ask children to read but we need to make available to them high-appeal and quality books and to serve as good reading models for them.

The initial phase of the programme will be run in 16 primary schools by the National Literacy Agency of the Ministry for Education. Over 10,000 books are to be distributed. Each class in Years 1, 2, and 3 will be provided with at least 100 high-appeal books for its classroom library.

This means that 1,700 children in 100 classrooms will benefit from this initial phase, ensuring that each classroom library has a minimum of 6 books per child. The books are both fiction and non-fiction in Maltese and English.

Each book is levelled according to the children’s reading age and colour-coded. Reading running records have been created to help teachers to establish a child’s reading level.

Furthermore over 750 before, during and after reading resources are provided for the books to be used by the children, class teachers, learning support assistants and parents.

The primary intention is to render the reading experience enjoyable and fruitful. Guidelines on good practices in the use of levelled readers in classroom libraries will be provided to schools.

Classroom libraries play an important role in determining reading success. In classrooms with well-equipped libraries, children interact more with books, demonstrate more positive attitudes towards reading, spend more time reading, and exhibit higher levels of reading achievement.

A classroom library provides every student with immediate, daily access to the books they need to become the best readers they can be.

Other initiatives of the National Literacy Strategy are the Aqra Mieghi/Read with Me programme for children from 0 to 3 years and their parents/caregivers, the Reading Ambassadors programme which seeks to provide reading role models for children and young people, and the Reading Champions programme which seeks to encourage children to promote reading among their peers.

Photograph: DOI/Jeremy Wonnacott

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