LITERACY DAY 2012

Literacy Day 2012

"World Heritage Tour"

According  to UNESCO, literacy is a fundamental human right and the foundation for lifelong learning. It is fully essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives. School as an educational institution should equip the students as individuals, members of their families, and societies alike with literacy to improve one’s relationship with the world. Literacy Day as school’s annual event has a chance to exchange of knowledge and ideas for a better quality of life. This year, the activities will focus on appreciating and conserving world heritage.  

The aim of this program is to help and encourage the students and teachers to appreciate and conserve our world heritage by reading, writing, telling and listening to the amazing world heritage of 28 countries so that it raises awareness of the importance to be a literate community for a better quality of life. I was the person in charge of this event and here are the activities we have done in our Sugar Group Schools:

Reading skill

• High school students learned to collect and read information and/or stories about the traditional song/music/dress of a country. In addition, they also learned to collect and read information and/or stories about the landmarks of the chosen country. 
• Middle school students learned to collect and read information and/or stories about the mother tongue language and the folklore of the chosen country. 

Writing skill

• High and middle school students learned to make four booths in their classroom displaying each information they got (traditional booth, landmark booth, language booth, and folklore booth) in an interesting way. The students also learned to write the information in the form of leaflet and/or flyer to be given to primary students when they visited their classroom. 
• Primary students learned to write the world heritage information such as Taj Mahal, The Great Wall, etc. they had watched and/or listened to on a postcard. Then, they brought the postcards and attached them on the wall magazine provided by high and middle school students in front of their classroom.     

Speaking and Listening Skills

• High and middle school students worked together to be able to tell the information of the world heritage to primary students in an interesting way. Some of them taught primary students how to greet using the mother tongue language of the chosen country. Others performed a storytelling of the folklore to the primary students. Another booth taught the primary students to do a traditional dance and another booth told the stories/history of the landmark by showing the miniature and/or illustration of it to the primary students. Most of the students were happy and excited to do the activities. What made me happy was that they could learn to each other. 

• Primary students did a world heritage tour to visit at least four countries. They watched and listened to the performances, interesting presentations, videos, and joined the activities prepared by their high and middle school students in each classroom. What can make us, teachers, happier than a smile of our students learning and doing something meaningful. :) Happy Literacy Day. 

Donations

I am sure all of you would agree that we including our students are part of the community and live in the community. Then, what else could make the event more meaningful than having an activity that the students can give a contribution to the society or community. Therefore, I asked the students to bring coins and/or paper money on the event. To motivate them, I showed pictures of the kindergarten condition where they were going to donate the money to. The total donation we got was Rp 4.758.000,00. Then, we spent Rp 3.670.500,00 to buy educational toys. Here is the documentation video when we gave the donation to Kilometer 37 Kindergarten on February 14, 2013.