Books can be a wonderful way to introduce and spark curiosity in children about .. well, everything and anything really! Science, technology, different cultures, emotions, animals... the list is endless. Stories are an invaluable resource for teachers in the classroom as a teaching aid.

The monsoons have started to sweep across many parts of India this month, so we decided to share our 5 favourite books about the rains with you! This list has books across reading levels and languages. You're sure to find the right story for your child/children and remember, you can always weave a story of your own, translate one of these to a language you're fluent in or even relevel a story to make it appropriate for children you are reading to. Let's get our umbrellas and rain coats ready! It's a downpour of stories. 

1. बरसा बादल In English as 'Rain, Rain' by Sanjiv Jaiswal 'Sanjay' and Ajit Narayan. 

 बादल के साथ आसमान में तैरिये और बारिश का मज़ा लीजिये।

Everyone wants it to rain! A peacock, a farmer and even a little child all request a cloud to oblige them with some rain. Will she or will she not? This is a sweet book and perfect for reading aloud to young ones. There are so many conversations this book can lead to - how we need rain to grow food, the different kinds of games we can play when it rains and even the animals that emerge when there's a downpour. This story is available to read in seven other langues! 

2. The Red Raincoat by Kiran Kasturia and Zainab Tambawalla

Little Manu is delighted with his shiny, new raincoat! What a lovely red it is too! He can't wait to wear it. But what's this? It just won't rain! Will he ever get to wear his new raincoat? Read this book to find out. It can be read in 10 languages including  top notch community translations to Urdu, German, Tibetan and French.

3. 'ताई ताई, गडगडाट कुठून होतो?' In English as 'Sister, Sister, Where Does Thunder Come From?' by Roopa Pai and Greystroke 

This is from Pratham Books' very popular 'Sister, Sister' series. Little Brother is full of questions and this time he wants to know where thunder comes from. Is it the roaring of the angry giant who lives in the sky that causes the heavens to rumble, or is it just the wild biker gang up in the clouds that makes all that noise? Of course, Big Sister has the right answer in the end, but before you start reading this fun book to find out, remember to ask, where do YOU think thunder comes from?

4.  The Day it Rained Fish - Ramendra Kumar and Delwyn Remedios

You've heard the expression 'It's raining cats and dogs'... but raining fish? Well strange things happen at Ballu the bear's birthday party. Follow him and Avanti the zookeeper as they get drenched in a rain of fish. The illustrations for the book were part of the #6FrameStoryChallenge from last year and are a whimsical delight! (Pssst... did you know that it's actually rained fish and even spiders in some parts of the world?)

5. ಘಮ ಘಮ ಪಕೋಡ! In English as 'Peacocks and Pakodas'  by Mala Kumar, Manisha Chaudry and Priya Kuriyan

This book is a celebration of all things monsoon, not just pakodas and peacocks as the title suggests. Hot, saffron laced milk, saving rain water, lush greenery and everything else that comes along with the rains. Priya Kuriyan's gorgeous illustrations bring the words alive, you can almost feel the fine spray of rain and smell the just drenched earth. 

Which one is your favourite? Do you have a rain story you want to share? You can create one on StoryWeaver and use some of the gorgeous illustrations in our image bank to help you!

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Are you celebrating Mother's Day today? Are you taking your ma out for brunch, have you sent her flowers and a thoughtful gift? Are you at the receiving end of a whole lot of love? Or, like some, do you think it's just another Hallmark Holiday? Well, however you're spending the day, we think you'll like our tribute to Pratham Books StoryWeaver mothers. We've shared the links to the books (and mothers) featured below.

Counting on Moru by Rukmini Banerji and Nina Sabnani 

In Moru's world, numbers danced, digits waved out and long division looked ike a graceful tail. But one day, this world came crumbling down in school. Moru then became the local bully. Then, someone helped him discover the joy of learning again. Read all about it in this heartwarming story.

चुन्नु-मुन्नु का नहाना by Rohini Nilekani, Sumit Sakhuja and Sonal Goyal

पानी, साबुन के बुलबुले और उछल-कूद। देखिए तो चुन्नू मुन्नू कैसे मज़े ले रहे हैं !

काकूचं बाळ by Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puraskar awardee Madhuri Purandhare

अनू अगदी उत्साहानं काकूचं बाळ बघायला जाते. आई आणि काकू मात्र सारखं त्याचंच कौतुक करतात. अनूला ते मुळीच आवडत नाही.

मेरा दोस्त by Swati Priyanka, Rupesh Sudhanshu and Suvidha Mistry

 सोनू को मिला एक नया दोस्त। दोनों साथ में बहुत मज़े करते थे। क्या तुम्हे भी पसन्द है नए दोस्त बनाना ? आओ पढ़ते हैं एक अनोखी दोस्ती के बारे में।

ಸುಶೀಲಾಳ ಕೋಲಮ್‌ಗಳು originally by Sridala Swami and Priya Kurian, translated by Bhavya

ನೀವು ಕೋಲಮ್ ನ್ನು (ರಂಗೋಲಿಗಳನ್ನು) ಮನೆಯ, ಶಾಲೆಯ ಅಂಗಳಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಡಿರಬಹುದು. ಆದರೆ ಎಂದಾದರೂ ಆಗಸದಲ್ಲಿ ಕೋಲಮ್ ನ್ನು ನೋಡಿದ್ದೀರಾ? ಪುಟ್ಟ ಸುಶೀಲಾಳ ಕೋಲಮ್ ಬಾನಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಅರಳಿದ್ದು ಹೇಗೆ ಎಂದು ತಿಳಿಯಬೇಕೇ? ಓದಿ ನೋಡಿ!

(You can read 'Susheela's Kolams' in English)

'I Want That One!' by Mala Kumar and Soumya Menon

"Not that one," says Anil's mother when he asks for something. "Not that one!" say all the shopkeepers in the market too. That makes the little boy very angry indeed!

'The Birthday Party' by Megha Vishwanath and Team StoryWeaver.

After his birthday party, the boy in the story opens his gifts and is thrilled to find a camera. But as he's playing with his new gift, he notices his mother crying in the kitchen. Find out what he does next! This is a lovely wordless book created by the StoryWeaver team with Megha Vishwanath's #6FrameStoryChallenge entries)

மணிகண்டனுக்குப் போதும் originally by Anil Menon and Upamanyu Bhattacharyya, translated by S Krishnan

மணிகண்டனுடைய தாயத்து அவன் எப்போது சந்தோஷமாக இருக்கிறான்,எப்போது வருத்தமாக இருக்கிறான், உடல் நலத்தோட இருக்கிறானா இல்லையா என்பதையெல்லாம் சொல்லிவிடும். எப்போது சாப்பிடணும், எப்போது தூங்கணும் என்பதைச் சொல்வது, அவன் வீட்டுப்பாடத்தைச் செய்வதற்கு உதவி செய்வது, அவன் நலமாக இல்லை என்பதை அம்மாவிடம் தெரியப்படுத்துவது போன்ற பல வேலைகளைச் அது செய்யும். இது மாஜிக்கா இல்லை அறிவியலா? மணிகண்டனும் அவன் அம்மாவும் கிராமத்திலிருந்து ஒரு நவீன நகரத்துக்கு போகும்போது என்ன நடக்குதுன்னு பாருங்கள்.

(You can read 'Manikantan Has Enough' in English.)

గుడ్ నైట్ టింకూ! by Preethi Nambiar, Sonal Goyal and Sumit Sakhuja and translated by Janaki Rani Turaga 

మంగూ రైతు పొలంలో ఉండే చిన్న కుక్క పిల్ల టింకూకి అస్సలు నిద్ర రావడం లేదు. రాత్రి చీకట్లోకి వెళ్లి చూద్దామని బయలుదేరిన టింకూ, ఎన్నో ఆసక్తికరమైన జంతువులను కలుసుకున్నాడు. టింకూ రాత్రి షికారు గురించి మరింత చదవండి.​

(In English, as 'Goodnight Tinku')

Would you like to give an extra special gift for a mother you know? Head over to www.storyweaver.org.in and create a story just for them! You can tell us about the story by emailing us at storyweaver.org.in or sharing it with us on Facebook and Twitter. Don't forget to tag it #MothersDay!

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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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