As the children’s exams approach in the month of March, some do still attend library sessions, though for shorter periods of time. We tried literacy games as a tool to involve the children (for shorter lengths of time) while staying connected with the library through literacy.
So children could participate in a game and then leave or stay for the next game. We had about 2-3 games in each session. Some of these sessions were separately done for Junior (4-7 years) and Seniors (8-15 years), while others were for combined age groups. The games were not meant to be competitive. We however retained scoring and time keeping, which were sometimes quite easily forgotten by the children. Like when they got engrossed in the newspaper dictation activity (detailed below). One of the challenges in selecting the games was to accommodate a mixed age group with the lowest at 4 years and the oldest at 15 years. Some of the activities are shared below.
We had more children, thanks to an internship project being simultaneously carried out by students (Shruti and Karthika) from Azim Premji University (Bangalore). This was in the form of a questionnaire to be filled by children in the vicinity of the library. Many children came to the library to participate in the survey preceded by interactions with parents and children in the community.
Joining the dots with letters, numbers and shapes (Combined aged groups)
In this game children were each given a sheet of paper with dots marked in different patterns.They had to join the dots with letters, numbers or shapes known to them. (Some were discussed before the game starts.) The objective was to see how children use their imagination to connect the dots to form a known pattern.
Junior children used letters, numbers or shapes more familiar to them and seniors chose some that could be most easily formed. Which also translates in the real world as making connections between concepts and ideas and in reading and making sense of the world. (Like to understand how seed, plant and fruit or leaf are connected. Similarly for rain, river, sea and clouds.)
Word dictation (Combined aged groups)
Each child was given a page (with text) from a newspaper. When a sight word was announced they had to search for it and circle the word as many times as they found it in the newspaper. This activity aimed to enable the child to explore the skill of searching a familiar words in a written text.
We had children in this group with the smallest at 4 years old. To keep everyone included we chose sight words like ‘the’, ‘from’, ‘is’ and ‘on’ . ‘The’ was found the most number of times. Even the smallest child could locate it. For other words like ‘India’ and punctuation marks like ‘?’, the children needed help and were happy when they found one.
We started maintaining a scoreboard, which was soon forgotten while the children were engrossed in the game showing how the children were drawn to this search and find activity.
Library-Word Relay (Senior children)
This is a game in which children formed two teams running to a bowl of words. Each member has to locate the word starting with the alphabet that is called out and write it on the blackboard. (A bowl with library words from A-Z are placed below the blackboard.) Through this game we tried to introduce a new vocabulary of library words.
There is a rule in the library that children should not run indoors. Which the children were more than happy to make an exception, as they ran a short distance, from their team to the blackboard. Some children could find the words more easily, while others learnt from discussing what they thought the meaning was, while the finder wrote it on the blackboard. This game involved children because of the movement and they came across some new library words in the process.
Dumb Charades (Combined aged groups)
A pack of dumb charades cards with different pictures of professionals, actions or emotions was used for this game. Some included emotions like anger while others had professions like a photographer. Children were in two teams and scored points if they could convey the charade effectively and the other team could guess it. The idea of this game was to give children an experience of expressing themselves, before other children. It was felt that the children who were initially shy were more confident after they had tried miming the image from the card.
Book Title Hangman (Combined aged groups)
All the games played so far did not include books directly, hence this game. Children sat in two teams in front of the bookshelves. (They could see the book titles.) This game was played to introduce children to the skills of visually scanning through a bookshelf and search for a title.The first 2-3 rounds did not go too well as the children were still figuring out how to scan for the book titles faster. Once they figured out how to look for the titles they could identify them very fast. We played this for about 15 book titles and they got almost all.
We felt that this game was more enthusiastically played by some children who are otherwise struggling with reading and writing. This brings to mind how children can be drawn closer to books with more interesting games.
Experiencing the joy of literacy games in the library
What started as an effort to accommodate the different schedules of children, also made us acknowledge the sense of achievement from a game that could motivate children to read and write. To further the objective of inculcating literacy skills like awareness of print, vocabulary, spelling and reading comprehension games could be a good starting point. While to actually work at developing the skills itself, would require being connected with a Read Aloud as a core activity, over regular periods of time.
The challenge of designing the game for a combined age group was overcome to some extent by choosing games in which children had the flexibility to respond within the capacity of their age groups. Like Joining the Dots, Word Dictation, Book Title Hangman and Dumb Charades. From the games, children tried the idea of joining the dots to form a desired pattern, explored the skills of word searching, got introduced to some new library words, expressed through mime and searched for book titles.
From the sessions, I learnt how games like ‘joining the dots’ can be used for introducing concepts where making connections are involved. It was interesting to see children most drawn by the joy of finding something, in searching activities like Word Dictation. A good combination of an indoor running activity and (A-Z) library words, was a thankful find on the activity shelf at Bookworm Library. It was reassuring to see how children are natural at expressing themselves through actions and can do better with a bit of encouragement. Lastly, it was most revealing to see children drawn to the bookshelf (reading only the book title in this case) through a game, rather than a lecture on why we must read !