Literacy Matters - Winter 2020

Bringing theWorld into a Literacy Focused Club: The Magical Books After-School Writing Project

by Oluwaseun Oti-Aina

Background of Magical Books The Magical Books social enterprise was developed in 2009 with the explicit aim of promoting healthy reading habits and lifelong learning in Nigerian children and adults. At inception, our programs focused on providing young adults with book advisory services at their workplaces and on social media. Magical Books decided to discontinue these programs because many adults appeared to lack the interest to read. The adults read materials tied to an academic exercise like a professional development course because this was required of them. Many of these adults grew up experiencing reading as something that had to be done for grades and not for pleasure because their first encounter with reading was at school. Therefore, in 2013, Magical Books started an on-site program for children called Summer Reading Club because the organizers realized children could better inculcate a habit of reading if they started earlier than adults. Through the Summer Reading Club , Magical Books hoped to promote healthy reading habits amongst the children who participated. This program was also structured to assist those who struggled with reading. Children who struggle with reading are known to develop negative or self-depreciative thoughts (Antoniou &Soveignier, 2007). These negative thoughts, in turn, are associated with low levels of self-efficacy, reading interest, and motivation to read (Antoniou & Soveignier, 2007). Magical Books partnered with a religious organization to use their space and led a book drive to obtain books for the club. In preparation for the first edition of the Summer Reading Club , fliers to recruit children were emailed to more than 300 adults who had worked with Magical Books at offices, book fairs, and other literacy gatherings sponsored by the organization. At the first meeting of the Summer Reading Club in 2013, 14 students registered. The Summer Reading Club spanned three weeks in August. The program supported two age groups; children between five to nine-year-olds and ten to fourteen-year-olds. Children participated in different activities, including read-aloud sessions, shared book reading, book talks, essay writing, literacy games, and listening to entrepreneurs. At the end of the event, participants received a certificate of participation. This program was implemented for two years. During this time, it was observed that children did not have the chance to read as many books as they wanted to read because of other activities required during the short duration of the program. Therefore, we decided to improve on the club and introduce another iteration of the program.

ABSTRACT — This article examines how an after-school program used authentic ways to engage children in writing and learning. For example, after a read-aloud session of a post office themed book, participants of the Friends and Fun Club had the opportunity to write to the book author and toured a post office. The Literacy Club cohort listened to an informational book and had the chance to discuss the book with the author via Skype. The author addressed questions that helped students write their own informational story. Members of the after-school club wrote a story, a thank you letter to the author and their book reviews were published in National newspapers. Participants had more to write about when they were provided with a purpose for writing and an authentic audience to address in their writing. Further research needs to investigate the impact of authentic literacy on children’s academic performance in an after-school program context. Introduction After-school programs have been offered in schools since the 1990s (Halpern, 2000). Initially, these programs were developed to help reduce behavioral problems in young children that could arise from being idle after school hours (Bayless et al., 2018; Halpern, 2000). However, policies like No Child Left Behind (2002) have increased children’s access to activities that could positively impact their academic achievement during these programs (Bayless et al., 2018;Sheldon, Arbreton, Hopkins, Grossman, 2010) and support their development in both literacy and numeracy skills (Halpern, 2000). While the need to address academic achievement is relevant, one issue is that after-school programs are different in terms of their focus and structure (Bayless et al., 2018; Halpern, 2003). Some aim to “promote positive development, or prevent delinquency, substance use, and other behavioral health problems” (Bayless et al., 2018, p. 538) while others focus on improving children’s academic performance. Magical Books , an after-school club, was focused on encouraging children to read for pleasure while building literacy and social skills (Jenson, 2013). In this article, I share my experiences of how this after-school program used this platform to improve children’s interest in writing by having them complete authentic literacy tasks. While these activities were employed in the Magical Books after-school club in Nigeria, I hope that this will give you ideas on how to create authentic learning experiences at your after-school program or in your classroom.

Reading Matters Writing Matters

| 20 | Literacy Matters | Volume 20 • Winter 2020 | scira.org

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