Outreach team member Khyati Datt writes about our recent workshops with Teach For India in Bangalore and Delhi.  

StoryWeaver has collaborated with many organisations in order to take stories to more and more children. One such organisation that works with children directly is Teach For India and we conducted a StoryWeaver workshop with the Teach for India fellows in Delhi and Bangalore. We invited fellows from the organisation to spend a few hours with us and brainstorm around ways that stories could be integrated with everyday teaching in the classrooms.

With the fellows coming straight from school, the workshops were shorter than our usual workshops but the fellows were actively engaging with us despite the long tiring day that they’d just had.

The session in Delhi began with a quick round of introductions where the fellows told us their role in the organisation. It was great to see that the participants worked in different verticals of the organisation - there were Program Managers, First year fellows, Content Advisors and TFI alums in the audience. After a brief introduction of Pratham Books and StoryWeaver, we dived into the demo of StoryWeaver and the functions available on the platform.

We discussed with them the various ways that different organisations were using the content on the platform to give the participants ideas on how to combine learning with fun! We also saw videos of teachers and organisations using StoryWeaver with their students and shared our thoughts on whether stories could help make classes more joyful.  The fellows then went on to their first task of the session - looking for interesting stories and plugging them in in a lesson plan. While some fellows decided to use the story for Reading Comprehension, others chose to use a STEM book to introduce the children to the concept.

After hearing the thoughts of the participants on what they’d seen so far, we asked them to do the most interesting task of the workshop - creating stories! The fellows saw this as an opportunity to create the kind of stories that they thought would work in their classrooms and added a fun element to their lessons. We received some great stories from the audience, with flying animals and dream schools!

We ended the session with a question - actionable ways through which stories could be used with children. While some fellows were excited to share their takeaways from the session with other fellows, the alums wanted to understand how stories could be used in their context.

We conducted the same workshop with the Teach For India Bangalore fellows. All the participants were in their first year of fellowship and were happy to share their experience in the classrooms  and discuss with us ideas on how they could use stories to make children learn in a joyful manner!

Both the workshops gave us an opportunity to interact with people who were working with children directly and we thank Teach For India Delhi and Teach For India Bangalore for arranging the same.

If you are interested in hosting a similar workshop for your organisation, drop us an email on [email protected]. 

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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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Our Outreach Manager, Payoshni Saraf reports back after three days of stories, storytelling and learning workshop with SCERT Delhi.

A common wisdom that all of us who work with children need to be reminded of is this - storytelling is the oldest form of teaching. Stories help shape beliefs, makes one curious, encourages exploration, makes one question and eager to know more – qualities every teacher hopes to build in her students. And teachers have always been storytellers. Sometimes they just need to be reminded of that.

Pratham Books joined hands with Pratham and SCERT, Delhi to bring teachers together and help them discover the storyteller within them to make classroom teaching more interactive. We conducted an extensive three-day training with teachers on specific subjects for each day - the idea was to delve deeper into the academic challenges they face in the classroom and how some of these challenges can be met by using stories, flashcards or other visual cues to make for engaging classrooms.

We began the training on a sunny Tuesday in April with a group of enthusiastic and experienced mentor-teachers. The mentor-teacher program by the Delhi Government is an effective one, where certain teachers are handpicked after a rigorous selection process as ‘mentors’ for other teachers. These teacher-mentors each handle about five schools and support the teachers in the school with regular trainings, observations, feedback and sharing of good practices. When a new idea or teaching tip is introduced to the mentor-teachers, they pass on the knowledge to their group of mentees making the information flow seamless and effective. In total, about 175 mentor-teachers participated in the 3-day training conducted across the following three broad curriculum categories: 

1. Languages (English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and other mother tongue and academic languages

2. STEM concepts (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)

3. Environmental and Social Studies

The session started with all the participants and the Pratham Books team introducing themselves. The introductions had a twist, where the teachers were encouraged to also talk about all the languages they know. The idea was to establish the premise for multiple languages in the classroom and the many choices and challenges children face while learning, thanks to the language gap between what they speak at home and what they learn in school. Post introductions, teachers were grouped together and asked to come up with academic challenges that they often face in class. Some of the challengess which repeatedly came up included:

• Most students are first generation learners of languages (especially English) and language understanding is essential for other subject learning.

• Teachers want  creative ideas to arouse student interest in class but face lack of quality creative resources.

• Making connections between the language spoken at home and medium of instruction is important

• Additional resources (like cue cards/ flash cards) are required to help learn languages, especially because of the diverse learning levels in classrooms.

• Not enough time is spent in class building concepts or relating concepts to real life situations and practicing learning by doing.

• Language barriers impede understanding concepts, especially in the case of spiralled learning where one concept builds on another. 

• Learning environment in the classroom is not joyful as not enough visualisation or experiential learning takes place.

• Teaching children to develop a genuine love and interest for writing is a struggle.

With the challenges tabled to be tackled in the later half of the day, the session moved on to why stories are important and how teachers can use StoryWeaver, a digital repository of multilingual content for children, in a meaningful manner to not only curate the content but also to create and adapt  stories, flashcards and illustrations as per their specific classroom needs.  A demonstration of the platform was given to all the participants and they were exposed to the diverse content that is hosted on StoryWeaver. The group also discussed ideas on how stories can be used in a classroom setting to assist learning and real-life examples from across the country were shared with the mentor teachers.

       

Post lunch, the session was handed over to our expert trainer, Subir Shukla. Subir is a former educational quality advisor to MHRD, Government of India. He developed the quality framework for the implementation of the Right To Education and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, India's EFA programme. Subir is now the principal coordinator for Group Ignus, which comprises of IgnusERG (consulting company), Ignus-PAHAL (non-profit) and Ignus-OUTREACH (low cost educational publishing). Subir joined us in training and spent a considerable amount of time with the mentor teachers to take them through some useful ideas on making classrooms more joyful and learning interesting and interactive.

Armed with Subir’s tips and knowledge of StoryWeaver, the participating mentor teachers spent the last part of the day curating content for their subjects and classrooms. Few groups also created some new stories and presented them.

The workshop ended with many enthusiastic mentor- teachers sharing about how they plan to take stories and StoryWeaver to the schools and teachers they work with. 

Click here to see more photographs of the day.

We are thankful to all the participating mentor-teachers who attended the training and their resolve to bring back stories into children’s academic lives. We are also grateful to Mr.Shailendra Sharma from Pratham and the Delhi SCERT for giving us this opportunity. A big shout out to Mr.Subir Shukla for the wonderful guidance he extended to all the participants.  We will continue to engage with more teachers and Government schools to take many more stories to India’s children.

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