UPDATE: 'The Elephant Bird' is available to read in  Assamese , Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Sanskrit , Tamil , Telugu , Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi, Konkani  and English .

Pratham Books' One Day, One Story is back! The nationwide storytelling campaign is in its 5th year. Through the campaign, we encourage our community of volunteers to use one book to conduct reading sessions, free of cost with children from under-served communities. For more details about the event click here.

This year's chosen story is The Elephant Bird by Arefa Tehsin, Sumit Sakhuja and Sonal Goyal. The story about a magical bird, and a brave, curious child is also the tale of an unlikely friendship and rare courage. We totally love this one!

Last year 2500+ storytellers joined us to take The Boy and the Drum across India (and some other parts of the world!). This story was translated to 7 languages on StoryWeaver. The more languages a story is translated in, the more it will travel to be read and enjoyed by children.

This is where we need your help. 

Yes, you guessed it right - we need translation volunteers for this year's story. The Elephant Bird' is already availble in English, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu, Urdu and Marathi. Your contribution to add a version of this story on StoryWeaver will go a long way in multiplying the number of PB Champs' reading sessions and in turn, help reach more and more kids. Wouldn’t that be lovely?  

We need all the translations to be on the site before 20th August, 2016.

If you have any queries please write to us at [email protected]

Here's a quick and easy video tutorial on how to translate stories on StoryWeaver. Once you've seen it, you can head over to the site to start translating 'The Elephant Bird'

P.s: If you're interested in joining us as a PB Champ this year,  click here to enrol.

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The cutest, warmest, furriest and squishiest photos of kids are the ones in which they are cuddling up with a loving animal. Well now, we can't send an animal your way but  what we CAN give you is a list of books that you can cuddle up with, along with excited little humans. Books about animals - funny, unpredictable, generous, strange, friendly, loud and just adorable.

Good Night, Tinku By Preethi Nambiar, Sonal Goyal and Sumit Sakhuja

Afraid of the dark? We all are sometimes. Here comes Tinku the dog, who explored the dark and found…. friends! Tag along where he wags on, and meet some new animals that are wide awake when you are deep asleep. From Hindi to Sanskrit, from French to Italian, we have all these translations available for you, and more!

 

Anaya's Thumb by Natasha Sharma and Ruchi Shah

Anaya has a bad habit. She keeps sucking her thumb! Know anyone like that? But then one day she went to the zoo and quit. Read about the human and animal behavior she witnesses before making this decision. Apart from a number of Indian languages, this book is also available in German and Portuguese.

 

Sniffles, the Crocodile and Punch, the Butterfly by Herminder Ohri

A big, strong animal that cries and a light as feather one that likes to punch! Let's go beyond the deceptive waters of someone's cover and read about this amazing friendship that… saved lives! Do you know Sniffles, the crocodile also speaks in Kiswahili and IsiXhosa?

 

Clean Cat by Kanchan Bannerjee and Deepa Balsavar

It doesn't matter how long you've been living somewhere, you will never know your neighborhood as well as a cat. This Clean Cat is up to all kinds of fun and antics. Read in 6 languages including Urdu, Marathi and two bilingual versions too.

 

Samira's Awful Lunch by Bharati Jagannathan and Preeti Krishnamurthy

How many of you have heard of kids complaining about what they got for lunch? *raises hand* You too? That's what we thought. Well, we have some very kind animals in this book who are willing to share ideas for food alternatives. Do read and find out what Samira finally chooses!

 

ಕಾಗೆ ಬಳಗವ ಕರೆಯಿತು (The Generous Crow) by Venkatramana Gowda and Padmanabh

It's hard to be in a classroom full of students and  feel 'different' or smaller than the others. It's probably like being a small crow in a huge forest full of animals that seem better than you. This is a story in Assamese, Telegu and Tamil in which a crow 'Caws Caws' his way through a journey of self-identity and self-esteem.

 

Noisy Crows by Kanchan Bannerjee and Deepa Balsavar

Here's another story about crows and this one is just plain NOISY! Available in Hindi, Marathi and Kannada along with English as bilingual books, find out which animal likes this crow's singing.

 

The Jungle Book by Madhav Chavan, Meera Tendolkar and Ketan Raut

Available in Punjabi, Odia and three African languages, this book follows a few animal friends who hear about an exciting new development in the forest. Their jungle has a school! So they go in search of it and wait for the teacher. Guess who turns up?

 

Busy Ants by Kanchan Bannerjee and Deepa Balsavar

Have you ever seen ants just loitering about or sitting in the shade passing their time? No, they are always busy, and they have some unique traits and skills too! You can read all about them in Malayalam and Tamil, along with other languages.

 

भीमा गधा (Bheema, the Sleepyhead) by Kiran Kasturia and Shweta Mohapatra

Translated in 14 languages, this book tries to answer a fundamental question of our existence: how does a person (in this case, a donkey) wake up early in the morning? Bheema likes to sleep like a log, and it doesn't matter who tries to wake him up. See what finally works for him. Maybe it will work for you too?

 

Do you have a favourite animal story? Tell us what it is in the comments, or on Twitter and Facebook!

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StoryWeaver's Outreach Manager Payoshni Saraf shares what happened at a two day workshop in Chandrapur, Maharashtra.

In the warm month of May, a two-day workshop on StoryWeaver was jointly organized in Chandrapur, Maharshtra by UNICEF India, DIET- Chandrapur and Pratham Books with over 36 teacher from Government schools participating. The workshop sought to encourage the value of ‘reading for joy’ and introduced the teachers to StoryWeaver - an open source digital repository of multilingual stories.  Through the workshop the teachers and resource people were taken through the various ways in  which StoryWeaver could help address the language development requirements of the students and were guided to make them more confident about using technology to bring in more resources into their classrooms.

The session opened with a narration of ‘Bheema, the Sleepyhead’ and the participants were asked to guess how Bheema finally woke up. This set the context for the workshop with the participants agreeing that stories

a) are important in the classroom

b) make us think creatively and imaginatively, experience emotions and build curiosity

c) help children learn better.

As the session progressed into introducing StoryWeaver with a demo, participants shared their vision on how they would bring more stories into their classrooms. The second half of the day was reserved for a hands on session where the participants created content on StoryWeaver. This resulted in the creation of over 18 new stories by 16 first time authors, the addition of stories in two new tribal languages (Gondi and Banjari), 4 versions of a single story in less than 24 hours and curation of 25+reading lists that were useful for the participant group and the StoryWeaver community at large.

This teacher created and shared a story written in a dialect of Marathi spoken only in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

Day two revolved around the various ways in which StoryWeaver can be used in the classroom and how non-fiction concepts can be delivered through stories. The teachers were acquainted with the 200 books on STEM concepts on StoryWeaver, a unique offering of fun and knowledge and a module on its use in the classroom.  As part of the module, we read out Dum-Dum-a-Dum Biriyani to the group and asked the teachers to share their thoughts on the book. Along with noting that the book establishes the everyday use of multiplication and division in real life, many other interesting anecdotes were also shared.

One teacher pointed out how the story breaks gender stereotypes by showing Basha being the one interested in cooking rather than his sister, and how such mindset change can be brought about in young minds only through stories. Life skills like empathy, teamwork and responsibility emerged as other key take-aways from the story.

In later sessions participants came together to brainstorm on ideas to bring in more ‘reading’ and ‘books’ in their schools and classrooms. Some of these ideas included:

a) make ’15 minutes of daily reading’ compulsory

b) buy/raise funds for more books and establish and manage ‘leveled’ libraries and use StoryWeaver to supplement as an e-library

c) use stories for enhancing classroom resources

d) encourage creative thinking and writing  

d) Sharing of resources, reading lists and best practices among the teacher peer group through a WhatsApp group.

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers brainstormed in groups to create and share a 'reading' action plan

A feedback survey was done towards the end of the workshop to know from the teachers if the workshop was beneficial for them, gauge their comfort in using technology to find and create resources,  their vision for its use in the classrooms and their commitment on the listed next steps.  

Many teachers echoed the sentiment of ‘how different reading levels of stories is very helpful in a classroom setting as children are at different levels and will be able to read a story as per their reading ability. The presence of so many stories at one single platform will be able to fulfill all their reading needs.’

A retired teacher who now dedicates his time in setting up libraries remarked:

“I set up libraries in various schools and I am always looking for more books on different subjects. StoryWeaver is a great medium for my quest. So many stories on so many subjects, all for free! This is like Alibaba’s Khazana that we have all got!”

The two-day StoryWeaver workshop generated a wealth of ideas and established the foundation of ‘importance of reading and stories in the classroom’. We thank all the participating teachers, UNICEF and DIET-Chandrapur for making this workshop a precious experience for all of us.

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