TinyTales is a performing arts initiative invested in taking stories to children through the medium of theatre.

The TinyTales team consists of three theatre graduates and storytellers: Kalpesh, Pratiksha & Santosh whose journey began when QUEST (Quality Education Support Trust) announced a Goshtrang fellowship to work with children in Ashramshala, Sonale village (District Palghar).

“We applied for the fellowship and through it we were able to perform stories for children in several schools,” shared Kalpesh. “Interactions with the children made us realise how the sessions affected them, and we decided that the experience  shouldn’t be restricted to children in one region. We felt the need to reach out to more children in more schools in more villages.”

The outcome of this strong belief  was TinyTales.

“Today, because of their hectic schedules, children do not have the free time to go and watch plays. So we decided to take the plays to them. We do not need a professional stage with sounds and lights; we improvise to present our stories wherever possible. In classrooms, under trees or even on playgrounds. We only need some space and enthusiastic kids as an audience.”

After 90+ shows, TinyTales realised that while listening to and watching stories, children get emotionally involved with them. “They laugh with us, they cry with us. This joy of learning together is really immense.” said Kalpesh. “Adding a visual element to storytelling not only strengthens the audience’s imagination but also subtly demonstrates the spirit of  teamwork, which is the base of any theatre activity.” Though theatre is at its heart a form of entertainment, TinyTales attempts to present a different world to children through stories which can enrich and broaden their way of thinking.

The team discovered the StoryWeaver platform when looking for the book 'My Best Friend' by Anupa Lal and Suvidha Mistry.  "It's like a Pustakancha Khajana for us" shares Kalpesh "and now we have a perfect list of great book to use. We have used a number of books from workshop and got great results."

 Geetanjali Kulkarni (Goshtrang, Project Head), Nilesh Nimkar (Founder of Quest) and Prasad Wanarse (TinyTales, Director), have chosen stories based on the age of the audience. "We’ve included books from the StoryWeaver platform such as जपून रे सत्तू! and बुजगावण्यांची वरात. All these stories were directed by Prasad Wanarase and we performed these stories in Marathi.”

 

 

The group has also begun to add more components to their sessions like ‘Goshtincha War’ where they gather together with students and read out stories to them. “This way they are introduced to various authors and their books and hear and learn new words too.”

“Our objective is to work with the kids as per their needs and demands. Most important of all are the little viewers who are genuine and constructive in their feedback. That’s why we love to work with them.”

- Kalpesh, Pratiksha & Santosh

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A few months back, Pratham Books joined hands with Pratham and SCERT, Delhi to bring a special workshop for the SCERT Mentor Teachers in Delhi. The idea was to bring the teachers together and help them discover the storyteller within them to make classroom teaching more interactive. We conducted an extensive three-day training with these teachers (read about it here) and exchanged interesting ideas on how stories can be used to make learning interesting and classrooms more joyful!

To encourage our dear teachers to try their hands on StoryWeaver and create some resources on their own, we held a story writing contest only for the workshop participant group of the SCERT Mentor Teachers in Delhi. The contest  invited them to send entries for Aao Kahaani Bune, 2017 and for them to weave stories around certain learning objectives of their preferred subject or language!

We received an enthusiastic response on this contest and after our judges went through the entries, they selected two stories that they judged to be the best. A big thank you to all the participants for taking part, and being patient with us as the judges read through each of your wonderful stories.

The results for Aao Kahaani Bune 2017 are finally here! 

Each winner received a printed copy of their winning story and a hamper of some of  Pratham Books’ select titles. Congratulations to the winners and we hope you continue to spread the joy of reading and continue creating wonderful stories for everyone to read and enjoy .

This year, we have 2 winning finalists:
 

Neeru Puri for ‘Going To School’

Suman Rawat for ‘दर्पण से सिखाया सबक’

A big thank you to everyone who took part in the contest. Your stories are now on StoryWeaver to share with your friends, family and children across the world.

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Vineetha from the Partnerships Team talks about StoryWeaver’s collaboration with the Kerala government’s initiative, KITE, (Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education) to take our books to more teachers, classrooms, and students through their digital initiatives.

It’s a bright, sultry day in May at Cotton Hill high school in Trivandrum where an ICT training session for 150 primary school teachers is underway. Cotton Hill school is one among the 500 such locations across the state where teachers are currently being trained by the KITE,a Kerala government initiative, on the latest ICT innovations for the classroom. Over the last 3 weeks, the academic team at KITE has been conducting large scale trainings for nearly 90000 teachers  at nearly 500 locations across the state part of ICT capacity building initiatives.

 

Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) is a Govt of Kerala establishment set up to foster, promote and implement modernisation of state run and aided educational institutions in Kerala.

As part of the Hi-Tech school project that works with over 9000 primary schools, it is conducting a large scale training for government school teachers. The objective of this training is to train teachers on the latest tools and platforms and basic ICT tools such as  open source software for documentation and processing, spreadsheets, audio recordings,and more.

 

And here’s where StoryWeaver fits in.

StoryWeaver, is now one of the tech platforms that primary teachers in Kerala will be trained on annually.

Our collaboration with KITE is very special to us, thanks in no small part to their commitment to the open source philosophy. In fact, KITE was recently in the news for its massive success with the use of open source software in Kerala government schools. After our initial meetings with the KITE team, and our shared commitment to ensuring open access, we couldn’t wait to get this collaboration off the ground. It began with the annual training that StoryWeaver was integrated into. The academic team at KITE explored the platform and further trained master trainers who took the programme out to the field and the 90000 primary teachers across the state.

At the training in Cotton Hill school, we met Sadhana M and Anthony Raj, two government school teachers and masters trainers for KITE who are leading the training on StoryWeaver. Cotton Hill school is one of the 12 centres in Trivandrum where this training is being conducted.

When asked about the common struggles they face as language teachers, Sadhana who has been teaching in government schools for over 20 years, says “The level of the books is either too high or too low. It’s always a challenge to find something that’s just right for our students.”

When  asked what the children liked to read, they added that in most schools in Kerala, children are exposed to mainly English and Malayalam books, in addition to some Hindi books. Anthony Raj, who teaches English,adds “Children are only going to learn to write and communicate better when they can read. Children need to read more to develop vocabulary in any language. So, reading is not something we can afford to ignore in classrooms.”

 

 

The teachers and trainers at the centre echo the role that technology plays in education in today’s day and age. They mentioned how all teachers are invested in their professional journeys, where tech plays a huge role today. They add that considering how comfortable children are with technology, it’s time for teachers to catch up, and platforms like StoryWeaver are a great way for teachers to integrate technology in the classroom.

For us in the StoryWeaver  team, workshops and trainings are a great way for us to interact with and learn from the educators on the ground. The KITE workshop was no different.

We saw the trainers using Ammachi's Amazing Machines to highlight how stories could be used to teach Science, while another trainer showed how Busy Ants could be used to introduce vocabulary and grammar in early grade classrooms. The Readalong stories a big hit with the trainers and teachers alike, who agreed that AV stories are always a great way to engage students’ attention and build listening and reading skills. We would like to thank the KITE team for letting us be a part of their work, and are committed to supporting this collaboration to work with more teachers and children across Kerala.

We came back from this workshop with a lot of ideas and suggestions, and of course, renewed commitment to put ‘a book in every child’s hand’. With partners like KITE, we know we’re a step closer to this vision.

 

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