The focus was on literacy at Englefeld School on Thursday night, March 21st. As part of their Learning Improvement Program in the school, the students, staff and parents gathered to celebrate literacy in all its forms. 

While a traditional view of literacy might be confined to reading and writing, a broader sense of literacy development seeks to make children more competent users of information in a variety of areas. Englefeld School's Literacy Night did just that. Its focal points and presenters had everyone thinking about literacy in terms of numbers, finances, and visual and graphic design to name a few.

Englefeld School Principal Corinne Harcourt outlines the various facets of the event, "For the event, we decided to focus on all the different types of literacy we could think of. So we decided to go with finance, comic book reading and writing, safety, mathematics, technology. We had a taste of literacy. We had a lot of different events going on. It targeted so many of our goals at once."

The event wasn't accomplished by the school staff alone. There was a variety of presenters on hand to support the school's goals. Harcourt explains, "We had RCMP Cst. Nick Lewis in to do a safety presentation, so they had a booth. We had Mr. Auroraman himself in to do a comic book presentation on graphic arts literacy. RBC came in to do a financial literacy presentation."

Horizon School Division personnel also lent their expertise to the event. Supervisor of Literacy Catherine Oviatt worked with participants on reading and writing strategies while Jim Swan with Horizon Technology took parents and through the ins and outs of the Internet. School staff were also on hand to showcase the efforts being made to support student literacy in all areas. 

The School Community Council (SCC) hosted a book corner which had children engaged throughout the evening. Principal Harcourt gives credit to the SCC for working with the staff to support the initiative, and the group paused during the evening to honour outgoing SCC president Kristy Richardson and thank her for her years of service. 

For the inaugural literacy event, Harcourt was pleased with both the turnout and the level of participation and support. Englefeld School looked to strengthen literacy, and it hopes the event becomes an annual one.