Reworking the “appalling” literacy rates in Aotearoa is the motivation of a veteran local primary teacher to launch a new initiative to craft and control the status quo.
Karena Shannon, who retired from Stoke School last year after working with a structured oracy programme for more than two decades, says poor oracy is one of the biggest contributing factors to our appalling literacy rates.
She believes the causes of low levels of oracy amongst school-aged children includes increased use of digital devices, poverty, and an intergenerational issue whereby caregivers may not be confident communicating with their children.
Oracy Aotearoa, which launched at Pūtangitangi Greenmeadows Centre earlier this month, is her parting resource to the community to ensure the need to address children’s insufficient oracy isn’t lost.
“I think that low oracy as a child is going to be something that will continue to impact throughout their life in a really negative way unless it gets sorted out early,” she says.
Karena says Oracy Aotearoa has officially been in development for the last two years, starting off with an initiative called Spread the Word, with an informational video launched in May this year.
“There was some real interest and commitment to taking it a step forward… it needs to have national attention brought to it, but we will start at a local level.”
She says Oracy Aotearoa, which has five members on its steering committee, will kickstart with a promotional video and website to entice lobbying and campaigning to influence policymakers to address low oracy rates amongst children.
Karena says the organisation will also develop resources and continue its local presentations to encourage parents and early childhood educators to also support children’s vocabulary and verbal language skills.
She says Oracy Aotearoa had received $5000 from Nelson City Council in its first year and for the past two years had received $28,750 from the New Zealand Lotteries Commission.
“If we’re able to attract some more resourcing then we would very much like to do some community workshops [in Te Tauihu] for parents to spread awareness of these [low oracy] children and what helps.
“My vision is that oracy will achieve the same status as literacy and numeracy in our community… so that we’ll have tamariki who are confident communicators because every bit of their life from there on in will go better if that can be achieved.”
