How Far is Far?

If you thought your friend's house on the other side of town was far away, you have clearly not read this book. Climb the Magic Math Ladder to get from where you are to the top of Mount Everest, to Kashmir, to the moon, the Sun, and ultimately, to the edge of the Universe, which is very, very, VERY far away indeed. Ready, steady, go!

ACTIVITIES

Use Your Body

Resources

• A Metre scale or strips of newspaper cut and taped together into meter long strips

What to do

• Find something long to measure. It could be a boundary wall, the length of garden pathway - anything you like!

• First ask the children to lie down head to toe, one after the other along the length of the item and find out how many ‘children’ it takes to measure the wall.

• Next, ask them to measure the same distance with their metre long strips of newspaper.

• What’s the difference in the measurement? Talk about how it’s important to have a standardised unit of measurement!

Globe Guesstimate!

Resources

• Globe

• Google

Ask the children to pick any two places on the globe and guesstimate how far apart they are. Then use Google to find the correct answer.

The closest guestimates win a prize!

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FINALLY! The results for Pratham Books’ Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest 2018 is here! A big thank you to all the participants for taking part, and being super patient with us as the judges read through each of your wonderful stories.

This year we received a whopping 115+ entries. We were pleased to see even more original language entries than previous years. We received 55 stories in English, 29 in Hindi, 14 in Marathi, 11 in Tamil and 6 stories in Kannada!

Our panel of judges were impressed with the quality of the stories submitted and the creativity of the authors. All 115 entries were read, re-read and then read once again by Pratham Books’ crack team of editors who have a deep and abiding love for children's picture books.

And now, on to the results! Drum roll please! This year, we have 3 winning finalists:

 

Each finalist will receive a gift hamper of books from Pratham Books and will have a one-on-one feedback session with a Pratham Books editor. One final story will then be chosen for illustration.

Here’s what our judges had to say about the finalists’ stories!

मेरी सबसे प्यारी वाली नानी  “You can never have enough grandmothers! The story was refreshing because of its different but quirky grandmothers. Each grandmother had something interesting to offer to her grandchild! It was lovely that the writer had placed no limitations on what women are capable of doing and enjoying with their family.”

What Did I Catch in the Garden? “The rambling, meandering way the protagonist finds her way towards an original poem was quite lovely!"

We Are A Family  “Inclusive, diverse, respectful of a child's curiosity - what’s not to love about this story?”

Congratulations to our finalists! You’ll be hearing from us shortly via email. 

Read all the Retell, Remix and Rejoice entries.

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Our Outreach Executive Khyati Datt writes about how v-shesh is using books to help develop language skills amongst children with hearing impairments. 

At a workshop conducted for parents of children with hearing impairments, Kanchan and Tabassum, trained sign language interpreters,  posed the gathering question: 

“What do you see as the biggest obstacle in ensuring that  your child’s learning is not restricted to the classroom only?” 

Most parents spoke about the communication gap that existed between them and their child which often resulted in the child becoming withdrawn from the family. Kanchan and Tabassum gave them a simple solution for this:

“Read to your children.”

Kanchan and Tabassum have always enjoyed interacting with children. They work with v-shesh Learning Services, an award winning impact enterprise that assists persons with disabilities (PwD), with socio-economic inclusion. v-shesh works in the training and education space to assist PwD in accessing formal sector jobs.

The duo are closely involved in the implementation of a project which aims to assist children with hearing impairment develop English language competency. When they joined v-shesh in 2016,  the project had just started, but overtime, being in the field made them realize the needs of the children. 

“Most of our students were either pre-teens or teenagers. We found a lot of interest and enthusiasm amongst the students to learn the English language, but most teaching learning material and methodologies available were not age appropriate to teach basic concepts. This led to the need for continuous innovation and to build upon existing material to make it relevant for students and simultaneously address the core challenge of assisting them with the basics”, Kanchan shares.

Books and beyond

Kanchan and Tabassum have always believed that stories are an important tool in igniting interest in learning a language. They started looking for books that were simple, colorful and had captivating illustrations. While Kanchan decided to divide the children in groups and asked them to read to each other, Tabassum started giving out books as rewards to the children.

v-shesh is a big believer of the PVR (Preview, View, and Review) method of teaching. In this method, a book is introduced to children by giving them a general description of the topic. As a next step, they read the book with the students using some visual effects and end the discussion by asking the children to review the book and share their learnings with each other. Simple videos were also made to explain the concept to the teachers and parents as well.

 

Children reading in pairs in a v-shesh centre in Delhi

Tabassum shares how the books from StoryWeaver were, especially, loved by children with hearing disability; “The children would often read the books on their own and volunteer to talk about the story in the class. ”

Kanchan and Tabassum’s advice to the parents at the workshop ensured that learning did not stop once the children exited the classroom. The parents of  Khushi, one of the students at the center, were the first to read a book to their child. Kanchan and Tabassum noticed a remarkable change in Khushi’s confidence and were happy to see that despite not knowing sign language, Khushi’s parents were able to connect with their child through books. 

Kanchan feels that, “Books are the most effective and the most important means of igniting interest in language among the students . A beautifully illustrated book helps motivate children to read and learn a language like no other”.

 

Source:  v- shesh centre in Delhi

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