What matters at the end of the day is the outcome; of all the countless hours that you have put into your project, your endless efforts and your sleepless nights. It just narrows down to this one word “results”; without which all the effort is just in vain. I recently got a taste of this sweet fruit, the seed of which was sown by someone else. I take no credit here, but it was so amazing to experience it nevertheless.
I have been working with Bookworm for its ‘Libraries in School’ programme since June 2017. The classes that I handle are 1st and 2nd standards. These children are still struggling. With a few exceptions, they do not have fluency over English, and I cannot really blame them. It is a Marathi medium school and they are children after all. The other day I got a chance to lead Class 4 of Shri Mahalakshmi Vidyalaya. And I didn’t think of it much until I actually got to experience them. Was I blown away by that!
SMV 4th standard shines in contrast to its lower grades. Hats off to all those teachers who have been conducting the LiS sessions for these students for years. For someone who has never had to engage with older classes, it was a pleasant surprise, and I was left in awe. The session began with me calling them forward for a Booktalk and they all raised their hands; this shows preparation and the confidence of knowing that they’ll be able to stand before the whole class and speak about their book. The two students that I called began their Booktalk by first telling their names, then the book’s name; what I wasn’t prepared for was when they indicated the name of the author and also the publisher. Then they started telling us the setting of the story, where it takes place, who are the characters in the book, what traits do they have, etc. They also showed us a picture from their books just to trigger the curiosity and then ended their Booktalk inviting others to ask them questions about the book, which they tackled with efficiency.
All of this, in English! That’s the main thing that blew my mind. I have LiS sessions in this school with the lower grades and as I have already said, they do not have mastery over English as yet. Somewhere between 2nd and 4th the students grow so much vis a vis their knowledge and their language skills. It’s like when you go to visit a relative, a cousin perhaps, whom you’ve met when he was a child, and to see him all grown up having acquired a dozen skills in those years that you missed? I got a similar feeling.
The session went on to the Reading Challenge (RC) activity that I was conducting. That day’s reading was paired, where 2 students were given one book to share. Most of these students were arranged to be seated next to each other in such a way that there’s one child who can read better than the other, or two average readers were paired, so they could help each other. This arrangement was done by my colleague who usually conducts sessions here, in the first week of the RC. They were given around 20 minutes to read their books and in the meanwhile, my assistant and I, monitored the rows, asking students to read aloud a sentence for us and writing down their names and whether they had done a good job or not. After doing this and covering all of the class, we noticed that only 5 children had a problem reading sentences. Though they could read smaller words, there’s still some work required here for these 5. Later, they were given an activity of selecting at least 3 4-lettered words and to make sentences using those words. This activity was finished in no time; so we asked them to make more sentences if they could find more such 4-lettered words. Students made 8 to 9 sentences. One boy even made 13. Commendable indeed!
We are born in this great era where access to books isn’t a problem; all we need is a little will to read. And such habits should be inculcated in small children who are unfortunately open to a million distractions; “Screen” being the most evil of them all. I am very proud to be part of a team that has brought about this change at the primary level.