Jaipur: The state education department will launch Mission Padho Rajasthan for students from Class 1-8 in govt schools Wednesday onwards, making the last period in every class a dedicated reading session. The campaign will continue till Jan 16 next year. The campaign aims to build a regular reading habit among students and strengthen reading and comprehension skills as part of the department’s ongoing effort to improve learning levels.“A ‘Reading Promotion Campaign’ under ‘Mission Padho Rajasthan’ is being launched in every school to enhance students’ reading skills. If students read, then their comprehension skills will improve gradually, which will also reflect in classroom education,” said a senior official.The education department said that the main objectives of the campaign are to cultivate an interest in and a habit of reading among students, to provide opportunities for enhancing students’ imagination, creativity, critical thinking and reasoning abilities, to develop skills related to fluent reading and reading comprehension among students, and to foster community participation within schools.Under this campaign, the seventh period in every govt school across the state will be dedicated exclusively to reading activities, such as storytelling, poetry recitation, group reading and book reviews. During this time, children will read books of their choice, listen to stories, enjoy poetry, engage in group reading, review books and discuss the stories they have read.As part of the campaign, ‘Read-a-Thon’ activities will be conducted to engage students in reading at schools, community centres, govt offices and other locations to demonstrate our collective commitment to reading. “Parents will also be encouraged to read with their children at home. Families and communities will also be involved through events such as Mega PTMs, storytelling fairs, World Literacy Day celebrations, among other initiatives,” added the official.In May last year, an oral reading fluency campaign was held where over 35 lakh students were evaluated and divided into four categories. The categories were divided as- students who experienced difficulty in recognizing letters and phonemes; students experienced difficulty in reading individual words, students who read sentences or simple passages haltingly (with hesitation) and students who could read sentences or simple passages fluently and with comprehension.
