World Read Aloud Day Celebrations at Garcia de Orta…

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Written by Barkha

March 04th 2015 was celebrated as World Read Aloud Day across the world.

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Bookworm celebrated the day by reading to children at the park. A Reading in the Park Day was organized at Garcia de Orta, Panjim wherein children from eight government and aided schools around Panjim were invited to be part of the read aloud. The stories were read out in English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi and Kannada. The idea was to include and introduce literature to students in all languages neither privileging nor marginalizing any language. We wrapped up all these read alouds with Konkani poetry that matched the theme of the read aloud. The folk song Undir Mujhe Mama was the introductory song to a traditional Marathi Folk Tale about Chintu the mouse.

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Some of the other stories we read were ‘Nasreen’s Secret School’ by Jeanette Winter published by Zaner-Bloser, ‘The Sweetest Mango’ by Malavika Shetty published by Tulika, ‘Khichdi’, a traditional folk tale published by Eklavya, ‘Chintu’s Cap’ published by CLR and ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see?’ by Bill Martin Jn. and Eric Carle published by Henry Holt and Co.

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The stories revolved around the approaching season of mangoes, one story was about young girls in Afghanistan not being permitted to go to school, one was an old folk tale about Khichdi, one was about animals and colours and there was poetry recitation of Konkani poems for the children.

The sessions were held in the morning as well as evening and sessions were divided based on language and age groups to be able to accommodate children of all age groups. Apart from the schools there were also preschoolers who came to the read aloud in the evening.

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The team from Curious Owl, a recent weekly children’s paper made a presentation for the children exposing them to the ways and benefits of reading newspapers As well as reading aloud from the paper to include listening to non-fiction texts read aloud.

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The choice of story read alouds was deliberate and conscious, keeping in mind the diversity of languages we know exist amongst school students in Goa, the richness of stories that are available in print that capture both the old in folk tale form and the new in political stories of war and experiences. We have always spent time on story choice at Bookworm, knowing that this is a make – it, break – it moment in the transportation of listener to the story world and we are pleased to report that our choices were well received, infact enthusiastically received by our listeners on world read aloud day!

For many students, coming to the park on a bright sunny day to listen to a read aloud was a surprising and refreshing way to celebrate World Read Aloud. We had simple practices of stamping students who listened to a story, rewarding many with book marks to keep them reading and in these small, rather insignificant ways, we realized that students felt the day was important, the act of both reading and listening significant.

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The team at Bookworm continues to celebrate Read Aloud by practicing it in LiS schools, MOP sites and the Library every day in the hope that every day will be a read aloud day in homes, schools and communities, everywhere!

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