- Tuesday 07 September 2021
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International Literacy Day (ILD) is celebrated on 8 September every year, and was founded by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1966. Its original purpose was to highlight the importance of literacy as a basic human right, and to encourage implementing the necessary steps towards becoming a more literate society. Imagine not being able to read a label, a street sign or even this post! That is the reality for millions of adults and children across the world. Essentially, ILD is all about reminding everyone just how important literacy is!
This year, The World Literacy Foundation is promoting the day through their Read-a-thon campaign, encouraging people to participate in their free online event involving storytimes, webinars, workshops and more. This year’s theme is ‘Literacy for a human-centred recovery: Narrowing the digital divide’.
As we all know, COVID-19 lockdowns have meant that there has been a huge shift towards online learning. As a result, literacy learning opportunities (now often delivered digitally) are not easily accessible to many people across the world. Children who don't have access to the internet and technology required for distant learning are at a disadvantage to those who do.
Literacy is a critical part of children’s education, allowing them to expand their capabilities and empower their decision-making. It is crucial for sustainable development in our society as it allows everyone to develop skills, participate and work within their community. Looking forward, ILD 2021 focuses on how we can lessen the digital divide across the world so literacy learning is accessible to children everywhere. This involves initiatives that aim to deliver technology enabled literacy learning equitably across the world. Check out the World Literacy Foundation if you're interested in more information and how you can get involved.
It goes without saying that literacy resources are essential to support children in their learning. We have a huge range of teacher resources, box sets, student workbooks, ebooks and editable pdfs that will help develop your children's literacy skills. One of our most popular series is The Literacy Box, which covers a variety of genres and text types to capture the interest of children at all reading levels.
In the spirit of International Literacy Day, we've created a free pack for you! The freebie contains samples from all three boxes within The Literacy Box series. In the freebie you will find:
- 3 texts from each box (9 texts in total).
- Questions for each text.
- Answers for each text.
- Excerpt from the Teacher Guide for each text.
Click on the link or images below to start your download.
Download your literacy freebie now!
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After more literacy resources? Check out our entire range here.