Story-Telling for the Primary during Literary Week: an animated folk tale from Gujerat.

Literary Week was observed in classes I to III from 27th April to 1st May 2015.

Children, grown-ups and human-beings in general, enjoy listening to stories. Books and movies have made storytelling a larger-than-life phenomenon. Story-telling is also a powerful and effective way to enhance the learning process. Storytelling adds joy and further kindles the interest of the learner to the myriads of topics that they need to learn and sometimes grapple with.

Keeping this in mind a story-telling session was conducted by Ms. Simi Srivastava of Katha Shaala on 27 April 2015. Keeping the theme of The West Coast of India, Ms. Srivastava chose to have a discussion on a Gujarati folk tale called All Free. Dressed as Gujarati story-teller she began narrating the story of Bhikumalbhai who was a miser and wanted to get everything free of cost! Her expressions, voice modulation, action and props caught the attention of the students.

The story came further to life when she quickly dressed a student in the audience as Bhikumalbhai and she played the boatman. The moral of the story was that we must not become too greedy and miserly. The children took keen interest in listening to the story and actively participated in the interaction. She also shared a power -point presentation on the culture, language, crafts, customs, famous personalities, food and festivals of Gujarat.

The session concluded with a typical folk craft of the state. She made a bird by stuffing cotton in a pre- stitched cloth cutout of bird and with the assistance of the teacher stitched on the tail of the bird.

It was an enriching experience for the children. After coming back to their classrooms, the teachers discussed the story. New vocabulary was picked up from the story and introduced to the students. Later they drew their favourite character from the story and wrote why did they liked the character. All the children enjoyed the exercise very much.

The children learnt to conduct themselves independently and express themselves creatively, successfully achieving and completing the circle of learning.

Ms. Shreya Chakravarti.