OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL . 2016, 2017
In 2016, Laboratório de Educação partnered with the international NGO TECHO to create and implement formative materials in a volunteer-based reading program for children in vulnerable communities of São Paulo, Paraná, and Rio de Janeiro states.
This partnership led to Reading Networks, a manual that explains the importance of reading aloud to children, provides age-appropriate criteria for selecting different types of books, and lays out guidelines for promoting literary conversations.
Reading Networks guides volunteers through four training sessions, and also includes diagnostic and evaluative questionnaires to be filled out periodically. In 2017, TECHO used Reading Networks to train 93 volunteers who read on a weekly and bi-weekly basis to over 230 children. Their feedback will help us refine the manual for use in future collaborations.
The manual not only includes prompts and activities for a series of four training sessions, but also diagnostic and evaluative questionnaires, and a timeline for implementation and evaluation.