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The National Year of Reading and Indigenous Literacy

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Indigenous literacy is a crucial issue in creating future opportunities for indigenous children. In this national year of reading, 2012 events are being held around the country to help encourage literacy.
This initiative is so important as nearly half the population struggles literacy and lacks skills needed to meet the most basic demands of everyday life and work. 46% of Australians cannot read newspapers; follow a recipe; make sense of timetables, or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle. Learn more about the national year of reading at
http://www.love2read.org.au/events-calendar.cfm

The Sound Therapy family program includes an album of indigenous stories read by the late well known Koorie story teller, Pauling McLeod. In this way non aboriginal children can become aware of some of our indigenous culture. It also makes the Sound Therapy program more accessible and relevant for indigenous children.

A new Sound Therapy program called Listen to Read, which is currently being trialled in several schools, will be launched in August as part of the National Year of Reading. The program takes Sound Therapy in a whole new direction by incorporating it into a unique, multi sensory phonics based reading program. This represents a joint venture between Sound Therapy International and the literacy tutoring program, Read and Exceed. Read more here… http://www.readandexceed.com.au/

One of the events to join in the National year of Reading is Indigenous literacy day on Wednesday the 5th of September, and everyone is invited to participate. Events and fundraisers will be held across Australia.
Indigenous Literacy Day aims to help raise funds to raise literacy levels and improve the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Australians living in remote and isolated regions. The project needs your support to help raise funds to buy books and literacy resources for these communities.

The Great Book Swap Challenge
One fun way to participate in this day would be to get involved in the great book swap challenge.
What happens in the book swap challenge is that you bring along one of your favourite books so you can swap it for someone else’s. You make a small donation and all the money raised is donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
Learn more here http://www.indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au/GBS/

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Tags: children, Classical Music, Indigenous Stories, Koorie Story Teller, learning difficulties, Literacy, National year of reading, Pauline McLeod, Read and Exceed, Sound Therapy, Whay aren't I learning?