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Literacy Movement Workshop for High School Students

Ever wonder why we are not so interested in reading a book? Sure, online reading material is far shorter and seems more interesting, but at times there is hardly any substance in it. Apparently, our intonation and even attention to the punctuation while we are reading a book can make reading more enjoyable.

“Literacy Movement” is one of Titian’s CLC Programmes and is offered at our centre in Kaliurang, Yogyakarta. This movement has been successful among elementary school students and the aim is to impart the same enthusiasm for reading among high school students. As in the case of SMAN 1 Pakem, the ongoing literacy activity in this senior high school is still at the beginner stage, which involves building the habit of reading books. The next phase is learning and deriving the substance from what is being read.

A workshop on “School Literacy Movement” was then held on Saturday, March 23rd, 2019, at Titian CLC Kaliurang. The speaker was Mr. Nuradi Indra Wijaya from the Community Library of Mata Aksara Yogyakarta. Workshop participants were from the high school’s Literacy Task Force.

In the workshop, students were divided into several groups for discussion about a book. Each group was given paper and stationery to make a summary of the results of reading the book consisting of:

  1. Group reading
  2. Search for quotes from the content
  3. Mind mapping: characters, timelines and places

Four of the participants were assigned to document the session which included taking photos, video recording and making captions and then publishing this activity on social media so that the impact can become more widespread or even ‘go viral’.

The discussion that went on in each group was exhilarating and the results were presented to other participants. From the presentation, some students still showed a lack of reading skills – intonation and punctuation – and even self-confidence to be in front of a crowd. After this workshop, we hope that each class can apply what has been learned and spread the enthusiasm for the literacy movement to other students in their school. (AW/DAP)