Literary Week

23rd July - 27th July 2018

Literature opens the door of imagination and allows an individual to observe the surroundings with different perspectives. To bring our children closer to reading, The Indian School-Second Shift held a comprehensive literary week from 23rd July - 27th July 2018

To support the curious minds of our young ones, we brainstormed and conducted activities to enhance their reading skills. The stories told to the children not only stirred their enthusiasm for reading but also values such as honesty, loyalty and selflessness were inculcated.

At the pre-school and pre-primary levels, several activities were planned to develop effective communication skills among the students.

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Day 1 As Ben Orki said, Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger. We started our week by narrating different stories. New vocabulary linked with these stories were picked up and discussed with pictures, role play, voice modulation and puppets. Day 2 A smart-board AV clip was shown to the students which recapitulated the story narrated the day before. The students were asked to arrange the story cards in the correct sequence. Day 3 Our pre-school enjoyed their movie time by watching stories like Pinocchio while our pre-primary had the day planned with creative craft work based on the story the class had selected. Newspapers were used in different ways for the children to realize the importance of recycling newspapers for a better purpose. Day 4 A puppet show was conducted by the teachers to capture the imagination of children by making the story seem more plausible. Day 5 The students were dressed in their favourite story characters and were taken for a character race. The literary week accomplished what we had hoped for; the students came a step closer to the magic that is held within each book and in each story.

For class I it was not less than a carnival in which they got a chance to watch stories, speak about their favourite characters, do various crafts, design a bookmark for themselves and learn about its importance, play pictionary etc. The week started with the teachers enacting the story of The Three Fish, from which the children grasped new words. Then, they made a big word wall and enriched their vocabulary. Next, they did a follow-up activity by the JAM session in which the children spoke about their favourite characters. They drew beautiful fishes expressing why they liked a particular fish. With the help of paper plates they crafted colourful fish mobiles too.

The children were shown their beloved fairy tales like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rapunzel and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. They played dumb charades, the guessing word game, with their peers.

Literary Week for class II started with an introduction to the states on the East Coast of India i.e. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh Orissa and West Bengal through map discussion and display boards . It was followed by the interesting narration of the famous stories of Tenali Raman. The children drew images of their favourite characters from the story and wrote a character sketch. Thereafter, they were shown a short film, Malgudi Days. The children were able to add new words to their vocabulary and construct grammatically correct sentences. They played Pictionary with great enthusiasm.

Class III started their literary week celebration by attending an enticing workshop on Story-Telling organised by The Times of India. They learnt to compose their own poems during the Hindi activity Aao aapne shabd milaye...ek nai pankti banaye. For yet another activity in Hindi, Dastaan-e-Kahani, students were divided into groups and assigned a few characters and dialogues, using which, they created their own stories. To add more flavour to their enthusiasm, the teachers had planned the Chain Drawing activity which was thoroughly enjoyed by them. The celebration ended with a Story-Telling session by the respective class teachers.

Class IV began by making Biography Posters on the eminent personalities from the east coast of India. They made creative book cover jackets for their own autobiographies. As part of the Hindi activity, the children read a story of their choice and drew the character sketches of their favourite characters. They also solved the riddles and created riddles on their own in Hindi.

Using their imagination and creativity, class V decorated their class door and converted their class into a book cover. They enacted a scene from their favourite story book before their peers. They enacted scenes from the famous stories of Tenali Raman in Hindi.

Class VI made posters depicting the biographies of eminent personalities of the East Coast of India, i.e. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Swami Vivekananda. They also shared knowledge about the people, places, culture and traditions of the states of East Coast of India. Thereafter, they drew a character sketch of Rabindranath Tagore and wrote some of his poems.

Children of class VII had the most unique experience of a Book Tasting activity in the library where they sat in groups on each table. The fragrant candles transformed the ambience and made it meditative. They reflected upon any one part of a book and wrote down their reviews about it. For Hindi, they made book jackets for a Hindi Vasant Book and composed their own poems.

From classes IV-VI, the children enjoyed attending various workshops organised by The Hindustan Times and The Times of India. Workshops on Effective Communication Skills and Creative Writing were organised by the Hindustan Times Group for the children. The Word Quiz and Story Telling workshops were organised by The Times of India. These workshops were interacted and highly educational.

We concluded the literary week by an Author Talk organised by publishers, Ratna Sagar. The guest author was Mr. Kulpreet Yadav. He not only gave valuable inputs of story-telling but also gave a chance to the children to build their own creative stories and share them with their friends.

The essence of our literary week is to inculcate the critical habit of reading books. The Literary Week celebration brought with it a plethora of activities and workshops to hone the language and literary skills of our children. All the four skills of learning i.e. Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking were taken care of during this week. A major part of the activities focused on reading and understanding the literary works by eminent authors of the East coast of India. Thus, the young Foundationers gathered enriching takeaways and experiences that introduced them to the creative world of literature and developed an appreciation for things literary.