yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

This piece based on my experience with Bookworm's Reading Circle is up on their website here .  Warm thanks to Bookworm and the Reading Circle participants.  Thursday evenings, 7.00 pm to 8.30 pm, some of us meet online to discuss the book we have read during the week gone by. Each of us have, of course, read the same chapter(s) from the same book. We are a part of Bookworm’s ‘Non Fiction Reading Circle’. The Bookworm team ensures timely communication ( book details, links and reminders for the meetings and such ) and also sends the books by Speed Post to those of us who do not have a copy and want to borrow one; we return the book once the sessions are over. We read the books individually, it is the discussions that follow that are a group activity. The group is small, 15 to 20 people, and smaller if the book is dense; a few of us may also drop-off as the chapters progress. The scale enables the Reading Circle to be close-knitted and informal. The group that continues, that i...

Our journey with Pratham books Anshumalika Rai and Nimesh Ved Published at Teacher Plus.  Thanks to colleagues at Teacher Plus, Pratham books and Richa.  We received a bunch of recently published books from Pratham publications for review. These books had us revisit our journey, of a few years, with Pratham books. So, rather than only review the fresh books, we take a step back to talk about our experiences with books we already had in our book room. The experience so far Pratham books have been a part of our book room since we rejigged the entire collection of books . Then we had reset not just the furniture but also the ethos of the room. We were keen to create a space that the children would enjoy being at and get the books they would like. During this restructuring phase we visited the book fair in Delhi . Here we got Pratham books. It did not take us long to figure that these were the kind of books we were in need of. Books that were colourful, diverse, and...

  Books and us Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai   Published at Teacher Plus. We thank colleagues at APS and Teacher Plus, friends at CIHTS and Harmony, Richa and others who have held our hands in this journey.    We have written about our journey with books in our school in the July 2020 and February 2022 issues of Teacher Plus . In this article, the final in the series, we move beyond the rooms and walls. We look at ourselves. The only way to grow is by looking inwards Tim Noonan We sensed the need to visit and observe other book places to broaden our horizons. Things fell in place and we secured a membership of the library at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies ( CIHTS ) at Sarnath. To say that this library is different from the book room in our school is an understatement; be it the objectives, the collection it houses, systems in place, or the aesthetics. A love for books, however, is common to both spaces and this has enabled us t...

A journey with books Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai  Published in Teacher Plus’ July 2020 issue here . Thanks are due to the team at Teacher Plus. We remain indebted to colleagues and friends who are an integral part of the journey. Thanks are due to the teams at PARAG , Tata Trusts , Pratham and Ektara .  We are associated with a school, catering to 300 students, in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. Together with colleagues we have undertaken an invigorating journey over the past two years. A journey to bring children and books closer to each other. This we share below.  Phase one To begin with, the library was located on the first floor while the classrooms were on the ground floor. Also, most of the time it was behind a closed door; a door with two big locks. If you entered you would come came across a board that said, ‘please be silent’. The library did not have a friendly ambience.  Colleagues associated with the library clearly di...