World Storytelling Day celebrates the art of storytelling every year on March 20. It’s a day for people around the globe to listen, read a story out loud and tell their own stories.
Many go through the day engaging in storytelling without even realising it.
Making up a bedtime story for your child, telling a friend about a funny, embarrassing moment, recounting a childhood memory or reading your favourite storybook out aloud, are all examples of storytelling.
Storytelling improves both memory and the ability to use narrative language, which is necessary for developing literacy. Storytelling also helps our children to become better listeners and better readers while building their vocabulary.
Approximately 758 million people across the globe cannot read.
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According to South African government statistics, the youth literacy rate for those aged 15 to 34 sits at over 90 per cent, whilst adult literacy in those aged 35 to 64 sits at just under 80 per cent.
READ Educational Trust is all too aware of the power of literacy, and as a NPO, focuses on promoting literacy across South Africa.The annual Word Warrior Competition has always drawn attention to creative young wordsmiths, encouraged reading and writing and promoted literacy among the youth in SA.
The winner of the Word Warrior 2020 Competition was Adam Schoeman from Grayston Preparatory School in Morningside, Gauteng.
Aimed at learners from the ages of nine through 16, the Word Warrior Competition requires entrants to write about engaging, fresh and authentic dialogue, for a play, for a movie or to use in a story.
Adam won a R1 000 voucher, and his school received R5 000’s worth of books.
A super way of sharing stories with the family and mimicking reading aloud this World Storytelling Day and any other day is to download the series of audio books available on the READ Educational website
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