Literacy Committee Keeps Its High Pace
Posted by Su Mander
Debate judges included (l) Director Su and (r) James Melen The Rotary Sunrise Literacy Committee has been busy working on literacy-themed projects over the past two months.
Primary school students in Grand Cayman aged between 7 and 11 were invited to enter the fourth annual Butterfly Storybook Competition – a regional competition for young emerging writers in the Caribbean organized by the Rotary E-Club of the Caribbean, 7020. This year’s theme for the short stories is "Giving something special to someone special through acts of kindness, friendship, leadership and/or respect”. PP Hendrik led the project, and he and other Committee and club members judged the 66 entries received this year. Three Rotary Sunrise entries were chosen for submission to the regional competition. The authors of our three chosen stories will each receive a $50 gift certificate and will be invited to a club meeting to read their original stories to our members. The Rotary E-club of the Caribbean will now select ten overall winning stories from the nominations from all Rotary clubs in the Caribbean, and these stories will be published in the Butterfly Storybook (which will be available for purchase at amazon.com). The ten winning authors will also receive a special prize from the Rotary E-club of the Caribbean. Good luck to our Rotary Sunrise entrants!
Good news for our literacy programs in the local schools. The Rotary District Foundation has approved the use of the former District Grant for CALS to be reallocated to part-fund the new Rotary Sunrise Home Reading Program at Bodden Town Primary School. The Home Reading Program adds to Rotary Sunrise’s support for Bodden Town Primary School with our ongoing ‘adoption’ of their school library this Rotary year. Following the success of the Genesis Trust Home Reading Program at East End Primary School, the CI Ministry of Education was delighted to partner with Rotary Sunrise to develop an equivalent reading program for the whole student population of Bodden Town Primary School. A substantial new ‘library’ of specialist levelled reading books will be purchased from Scholastic Publishers (in the US) and utilised as part of a monitored reading program where students select and take home a book at their independent reading level to read overnight, ideally with a family member. Parents are invited to stay engaged in the Home Reading program by reading the books with their children and regularly completing and discussing the reading logs to help track their child’s progress.
Our members have also been busy judging at the recent Conyers Interschool Debate Tournament that took place at St. Ignatius Catholic School on Tuesday 24th November. This new one-day debate tournament organised by the debate coaches at CIS and St. Ignatius introduced a new format of debate competition to the islands where participating high schools entered up to three teams of two debaters in the tournament. The competition between the teams from CIS, Clifton Hunter High School, Cayman Prep & High School and St. Ignatius Catholic School was fierce. Each team came prepared to argue both sides, for and against, the resolution that single-sex schools are better for education than co-educational schools. Upon arrival at the tournament, the teams were drawn at random and told whether they would be arguing for or against the resolution and who their opponents would be. This led to some exciting debating and rebuttal along with a few jokes about distractions caused by the opposite sex.
Over twenty volunteer judges including five Sunrise Rotarians sat on panels of three or four and scored the debaters on their argumentation, presentation and rebuttal skills. The standard of competition was high and the judges were impressed by the debaters’ confidence in the third, impromptu round of debate where the students were given only 10 minutes to prepare their arguments on whether or not reality TV (topic 1) or beauty pageants (topic 2) cause more harm than good to society. The Honourable Justice Mangatal judged the top two teams in the final exhibition debate, and the worthy winners were the team of Finley McDougall and Ruth Naomi Harris from St. Ignatius. Recognition was given to the top three teams and the top five individual debaters in the competition with Ruth Naomi Harris scooping the Best Individual Debater award. Well done to all the student debaters!
We are excited to announce that Rotary Sunrise is teaming up with Rotary Central to host the Fred Speirs Memorial Debate Workshop in late January 2016. This new debate workshop will be presented primarily by Mr. Brian P. Casey, QC, a leading debate coach from Halifax, Canada. All the high schools in Cayman will be invited to send a number of students together with their debate coaches/teacher to attend the two-day workshop and related events. This workshop will provide an opportunity for the debaters to not only practice their debating skills, but to also learn more about debating techniques in a collaborative educational environment. A couple of the related events will focus on professional development for existing and future debate coaches/teachers at the high schools. The debaters will be encouraged to put their workshop experience and new skills to the test at the next Conyers Interschool Debate Tournament in April 2016.
And Ho Ho Ho!! Sunrise Literacy Committee members will be spreading a lot of Christmas cheer this year by delivering last year’s Buy-A-Kid-A-Book ESL (Spanish/English bilingual) reading books to three selected government schools – Sir John A. Cumber Primary School, George Town Primary School and Savannah Primary School. Look out for further news of the book presentations in December.