Stories from Pratham Books Champions: September 2013

Tuesday, 24 September 2013

Pratham Books Champion : Minakshi Prabhu

This story was sent to us by Minakshi Prabhu.

I had a great time with my story session. The sessions was in the govt school at Tippasandra, Bangalore. I could really see that sessions like these will help the children because many of the children at a sixth or seventh grade were struggling with reading the English text book.

I also covered the smaller grades - did about 3 sessions and used both Paplu the giant as well as Phani's funny chappals. I started the session with asking the children to spend 30 mins a day reading / revieiwng what they did in school. I ended the session reiterating the same as well as promising them to come every month once to read with them.

Thank you Minakshi for spreading the joy of reading!

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This International Literacy Day, Pratham Books has taken a 1000 steps towards a 'Reading India'

What started as a small step by Pratham Books to spread the joy of reading has become a movement. Last year Pratham Books initiated the One Day-One Story initiative on the occasion of International Literacy Day and we conducted over 250 storytelling sessions. This year we are delighted that over a 1000 sessions are happening across the length and breadth of the country.We will be sharing the stories of all our champions through our blog.

View more pictures from the International Literacy Day Celebrations.

This blog contains stories sent in by all our champions. Browse through the blog for more stories. You can also go through the tags on the right side of the blog to find stories happening in your own city.

Note : If any of you want to be a Pratham Books Champion and join us on our journey of getting 'a book in every child's hand', write to us at web(at)prathambooks(dot)org.

Friday, 20 September 2013

Pratham Books Champion : Lavanya Donthamshetty

Lavanya Donthamshetty wrote to us about the session she conducted in Chennai. Lavanya, a freelance writer form Chennai. I have two children and my schedule revolves around theirs. I have always loved to write and recently discovered a penchant for writing short stories. I am also a huge English history buff and love reading about Plantagenet and Tudor histories. You can follow Lavanya on Twitter at @lavanyad

Here's a photo collage of the session I did at The Yellow Bus play school in Besant Nagar last Friday. I had about 12-15 children, most of them in the 5 - 8 age range with a few 4 year olds.

We started off with The Paper Play. The children enjoyed messing with the sheet of paper and especially when I folded it into a paper boat, they all weighed in with how they know to do it themselves and who taught them to do so. Next we went to discover Paplu, The Giant. It was received well enough. I had wanted to do a craft session with them, so the children could take home some physical sample of what they did that afternoon.

So, armed with a drawing of Paplu, some scraps of cloth and a stick of glue, I asked them to "Dress Paplu" and gave them their own bits of cloth, an outline of Paplu and some glue. They really went to town!

It was great fun and I am sure the children enjoyed it as much as as I did.

Thank you Lavanya for spreading the joy of reading!

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Pratham Books Champion : Priyanca Vaishnav and Ujjwal Munshi

Priyanca Vaishnav sent us pictures from the storytelling session she conducted with Ujjwal Munshi. Priyanca's friend Twara Mehta also did a Gujarati translation of the book in case other champions wanted to use it.

Thank you Priyanca, Ujjwal and Twara for spreading the joy of reading!

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Pratham Books Champion : Neela Gupta

This story was sent by Neela Gupta - a champion who has been volunteering with us since the beginning of the Champions initiative. Today's story comes from Neela Gupta who conducted three storytelling sessions in Vadodara. Neela has worked as a librarian for about 30 years in different kinds of libraries (research library, an industrial library, a public library, a college library and school libraries). According to Neela, this is her longest and most enjoyable tenure of work is with 5 different school libraries. It gave her a chance to be with children and try to understand the world of children ranging from age group of 6 - 18 years. She has learnt a lot from watching and interacting with them. Neela has also volunteered with different underprivileged groups and tried to introduce them to the world of books. She says, "This kind of work gives me immense pleasure. I feel it connects me to a marvelous world of magic where there is some new discovery everyday. It also helps me explore myself and my relationship with children and adults."

Neela writes ...

On 7th Sept, Aura was abuzz with laughter, children's shouts and running around.. all this was the in preparation for the arrival and welcome of Paplu-the giant.

Children already knew that there was a story telling session for them today. As usual, there was excitement in the air.

As I reached, children were eager to see what books I have got today? They did not take any time in settling down. I told them the story orally while they looked at the pictures in the Hindi and English version of the book. we also had 2 student volunteers sudying in 11th std. from an elite school.

Children found the story interesting. But there was one question.. Angaar giant would go away and not come near raghav's village but then he may go somewhere else and trouble other people. Sad...:( :( :(... can anything be done about this? How to help Angaar and other giants to become helping little boys like Paplu?

Children started thinking...the question was..

If I wanted to transform all giants become helping, gentle, little boys and girls like Paplu, what would I do?

Some thoughts from them:

"I will teach them some new activities to keep them engaged."-Rishi

"I will tell them to go to school."-Atul

"I will tell him that it is not good to trouble any one."-Nirmala

So thus started the movement of rewriting the story of Paplu. Children got into small groups and brain stormed how they could change the end of the story. Everyone shared some new ideas including-

..how can Paplu change his size by drinking a potion,

..by reciting another mantra

..what can he tell Angaar?

..How beautiful the world is where there are no giants to trouble any one? where there are friends everywhere?

The student volunteers helped them form their story. Finally a group of boys came up with writing and drawing a one page short story of Paplu which had a different end to the story. One of the boys who is good at drawing, visualized Paplu and did the drawing on the front page of their 'storybook'!

Neela also adds :

And, you will be happy to know that 2 years back we had started our library by ordering 40-50 Pratham books. At that time children could read only Gujarati and a little bit of Hindi. Now many of them are reading English books!! And some of them can write simple English sentences. It is a great achievement for them. I want you to share the credit!!

Love you, Pratham Books!!

Thank you Neela for spreading the joy of reading!

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Pratham Books Champion : Yashas C.J.

Yashas C.J. shared the following story about his storytelling session. Yashas C.J., currently works as a Teach For India fellow in a low income municipal school in Chennai. He has over 8 years of corporate experience and is currently on a community empathy sabbatical from his organization.

He works as a class teacher for a bunch of 36 excited students of the “United Universe” classroom (Class 2B – “United Universe”). His hobbies include reading, creative writing, post crossing and cycling.

Stories capture attention span across age groups. Being a teacher, its a joy to ocus towards improvement of skills like reading fluency and reading comprehension and what better way to do it than via a read aloud of an interesting book.

As the banner was put up and the event was discussed about and kick started, the energy levels of my students reached new heights. As I started reading and dramatizing the story, they listened in rapt attention. They were joyful when we learnt new words like “Giant”,”Village” etc. (I teach a Grade 2, First year intervention class room and my students are rapidly picking up vocab.) and they were written on our word wall.

The energy levels were infectious throughout the time in which the story was being narrated and the children literally danced with JOY when it was read out to them in the end that Paplu won the good will of his friends (villagers), by his good deeds.

Thus, this whole exercise proved to be super educative academically and the icing of the cake was children walked away with important values for life.

Thanks Pratham Books for this wonderful initiative. May your tribe increase.

Thank you Yashas for spreading the joy of reading!

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Pratham Books Champion : Manasa Ramakrishnan

Manasa Ramakrishnan's sent us these pictures of the storytelling session conducted in her classroom.

She said,

This is class 2A, in Chennai Primary School at Taramani, Chennai and these are my magicians. Paplu the giant was a great hit and we loved the read-aloud session. Happy Literacy Day and Thank you :)

Later, Manasa sent us a write-up about her session :

The Pratham Books story read-aloud was a great hit and my bunch of magicians(as I call them) totally loved the experience. They loved the main character and started predicting the next scene and the way the story was going to end. They are a bunch of emergent and pre-emergent learners, who probably now know 10 sentences in English. This is the amazing part, even though they couldn't understand the whole story in
English, when it was enacted out and broken down for them, they loved it. They even learnt that rhyme and wanted to help the characters in the story. They had their own discussion and 'moral' for the story.

Thank you once again Pratham Books for this wonderful experience.

Thank you Manasa for spreading the joy of reading!

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Pratham Books Champion : Talking Turtles

Deepa Panchal and Shreedevi conducted a storytelling session along with the Pratham Books (Mumbai) team on 7th September, 2013. We would like to thank the Oxford Bookstore for being our venue partner and supporting us in this initiative. Deepa and Shreedevi conducted the storytelling session on behalf of their company, "Talking Turtles Storytellers" and they tell stories to children of all ages. They also do storytelling for street children on a regular basis.

Thank you Deepa Panchal, Shreedevi, Talking Turtles and Oxford for spreading the joy of reading!

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Pratham Books Champion : Smriti Middha

Smriti Middha sent us a short note and some pictures of the storytelling session she coordinated and conducted in Mozambique. Smriti is an IIM Lucknow Alumni and she volunteers in the social sector often (kids and women empowerment). She currently works with Fleximoms and Sheroes. She also loves travelling and meeting new people and has started a monthly e-magazine called Travel Chronicles.

She says ...

With the help of a portuguese / English translator, I was able to do it.

Kids here loved it. They were surprised and shy initially and were looking confused. Then when the story began, they all felt lovely. They were asking me how to be more like Paplu. Even told me bandits were bad people and they will make sure none entered their residential areas. I am happy I could do it for them with help from you.

Thank you Smriti for spreading the joy of reading!

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