Marking World Science Day with the launch of our STEM Literacy Programme
Posted by Asawari Ghatage on November 10, 2022Today is World Science Day and 2022-23 is the International Year of ‘Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development’. As part of these observances, UNESCO emphasizes the importance of giving children access to quality science education from an early age, to encourage them to ‘develop curiosity’, and ‘value the quest for truth’.3
We are delighted to mark World Science Day with the launch of the Pratham Books STEM Literacy Programme that helps early learners discover STEM concepts through the magic of storybooks.
Our story-based learning approach
At Pratham Books' StoryWeaver, we are firm believers in the role that stories can play in making STEM inspiring and thrilling for young learners.
Stories have the ability to feed our curiosity, our urge to know “what happens when…”, which is precisely what makes them such a powerful learning tool.
Highlights of our STEM Literacy Programme
The programme offers digital story-based learning resources for Grades 1 to 5, that teachers can use to spark discovery and engagement across a broad range of Maths, Science & EVS topics.
STEM literacy builds core 21st century competencies like curiosity, perseverance, problem-solving and innovation - enabling a lifetime of learning.Teachers play a pivotal role in helping children build these foundational skills. We hope that we can support them with this programme, by bringing the magic of storybooks into the classroom.
Explore the STEM Literacy Programme
*Illustrations from:
Anna's Extraordinary Experiments with Weather, written by Nandita Jayaraj and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan
Why Do Sunflowers Love the Sun?, written by Siddharth Mehta and illustrated by Debangshu Moulik
comment (1)Children from Adivasi Background get their own Language of Literacy
Posted by Sherein Bansal on October 21, 2016Imagine if the language you speak to your friends, think your funniest thoughts in and dream your bravest dreams in, is hardly known in your own country, and might even reach an early death in two decades. To ward off this isolation acutely felt by Kora and Santali, tribal languages spoken in communities across West Bengal and Odisha, Suchana has been working towards their preservation with quiet determination fuelled by their love for literacy and a zeal for preserving adivasi languages.
Suchana, a 10 year old community group, works in Birbhum, W. Bengal towards the education of pre-school to class 10 children from Santal and Kora adivasi communities. Suchana knows that when education knocks at your door, it must come in a language that you understand. Entering a school room can be daunting for a child from an adivasi background as she or he is expected to know a state-language that they or their family have never learnt, or have been denied access to. Our education system is missing out on a huge cultural opportunity here by not being inclusive of more languages, and thus not reaching out to children who need education the most. This tragedy of education not benefitting children who are trying to break centuries-old shackles of being looked down upon as an adivasi is profound.
This is where Suchana steps in to ensure ‘Right to Education’. They have made it their mission to make sure that Kora and Santali are looked upon as legitimate, literacy-inducing languages, and that ‘adivasi school going kids’ can just be school going kids. They aim to sustain cultural identities and promote literacy among the tribal and underprivileged communities through their education programs. As far as they know, they are the first organization to have created children’s books, or in fact any books at all, in Kora.
One of their key educational initiatives, Mobile Library, was started in 2011 with children of 6 villages. Today, the library travels in two vehicles, covers 25 villages and has 1135 members. It consists of books that are written in multiple languages, especially in the tribal languages (Kora and Santali) that children can relate to and learn in. Children who have never held story books in their hands or understood their importance now have access to joyful reading material that’s related to their education and growth, along with creativity and imagination.
Kirsty Milward, Founder of Suchana, says, “In Santali and Kora – and other adivasi languages – there is no children’s literature at all. This is at least partly because until the current generation, most adivasi children did not go to school. Among the (still quite young) mothers of Suchana’s current adivasi students, for example, 80% never went to school at all. So where was the need for children’s books in those languages?”
We are proud of our association with Suchana. The organisation’s teacher-translators have been able to develop supplementary reading materials in Kora and Santali at a much faster and prominent way through StoryWeaver. Currently, 27 Kora books and 19 Santali, both in Bengali script are on StoryWeaver. Suchana has printed 10,000 copies of these books for their mobile library and are exploring loading e-books onto SD cards to disseminate stories on low cost mobile phones.
It’s a huge step for languages that were near obscurity and oblivion, to be suddenly sailing the digital waves and ready to be accessed by the whole world in the form of beautiful stories. Read these stories in Bengali script in the tribal languages of Kora and Santali.
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Top Reads of 2017!
Posted by Remya Padmadas on December 26, 2017