THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a fun-learning experience for the students of Christ Nagar International School in the city who donned the role of authors and entrepreneurs for a few days. Students aged five to 15 years designed the posters and covers for their individually authored books. They also actively marketed their books. The activities which were part of the six-week-long reading challenge was conducted by the faculty from the British Council library, Chennai. A team of five members from the council had visited the school, the other day.
The activities were led by Susan Chettri, executive, Library and Information Services, British Council Division along with trainers Premila Lowe, Mekha Rajan, Diana Ningthoujam and Vaishnavi Prasad.
As part of the two-month activity, students had to complete at least one book per week. In the ‘Hot Seat’ game, the students had to give a summary of their books and even try to market it themselves. The reading challenge finally culminated with a brief three-day-long session, in which students were given interesting activities and games According to Susan, the aim is to promote reading habits among young children. “Students are initially given books to read during which they will also be writing a review. After this, there will be workshops conducted where areas like listening, speaking, reading and writing skills of the student will be covered. The entire purpose is to make reading a fun activity.”
Preeti K, teacher coordinator of the programme said around 500 books were supplied by the council through courier as part of the challenge. Adithyan, one of the students, said he never assumed a reading workshop could be this interesting. Having conducted reading workshops and challenges for school students earlier, it was the school’s initiative to have a reading challenge supervised by the British Council faculty. Rajani, mother of a class IV student, said, “It has been a wonderful activity in the sense that it helped my daughter, who already likes reading, open up to a wide variety of books and authors. This is unlike the usual situation where children choose their own books.”The British Council which keeps conducting similar reading activities and workshops in schools across the country had organised a reading challenge at Trivandrum International School last year.