Buenos Aires, Argentina

Special Reading Initiatives

Since 2009, the National Reading Plan of the Ministry of Education has developed strategies to improve teaching in reading with the main purpose of promoting the joy and attraction of reading in students.^f The main resources offered by the National Reading Plan include:

• Teacher training—Reading, writing, illustrator, and specialist workshops; training related to the selection of texts, the promotion of reading, and the teaching around classroom collections
• Production of materials—Publishing and distributing literary and pedagogical material for teachers and students of all levels of education throughout the country
• Library Reading Station “Ernesto Sábato”—Operates year round at the bus terminal in the City of Buenos Aires with a collection of 3,000 books, activities of school support, and workshops; deploys actions in the schools of the local community
• Grandmothers and Grandfathers Read Stories—Aimed at training senior volunteers interested in childrenʼs and young adult literature to read aloud in schools and in recreational and cultural community centers

At the local level, the Ministry of Education of the City of Buenos Aires develops its own plans to stimulate reading:

• Reading Schools—Since 2002, it promotes strategies to encourage reading and writing in classrooms at all levels of education within the school system.
• Read to Grow—Implemented since 2010, it distributes textbooks, both in Spanish and in English, to state-run primary schools and private primary schools; each teacher selects books for use during the school year from a list drawn up by five specialists in childrenʼs literature from the Secretariat for Planning and Educational Innovation of the Ministry of Education.