N.C. A&T book festival looks to empower families

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (N.C. A&T) is hosting its second annual book festival this Saturday.

It’s called the Aggies READ Book Festival, where “READ” stands for Reading Empowers Action and Discovery. 

The event will feature stations with storytellers, authors, dance teams and African drummers — all to help children and their families get excited about reading. 

Kellee Watkins, a literacy professor at N.C. A&T, says this is also a chance for her students, who are aspiring teachers, to practice what they’ve learned about the science of reading.

“So there will be a station for phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. And our literacy scholars are running those stations," Watkins said. "And that's where they're going to train the parents on the five components of reading, like what they can do at home to promote reading and language development.”

The festival is open to the public and will be held at Proctor Hall on N.C. A&T’s campus on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.