Pratham Books Champions : Friends from Central Manor
12 years ago
As part of Litworld’s World Read Aloud Daycelebrations, we decided to ask our community if they would conduct storytelling sessions in their cities. 50 awesome champions decided to take part and ‘celebrate the power of words’. We will be sharing the stories of all our champions through our blog.
Today’s story is about two sessions that took place with our dear friends from Central Manor Elementary School, Pennsylvania. Teresa Reisinger (the lovely librarian we’ve known for a few years now) promptly wrote to us to ask if her school could participate and be a Pratham Books Champion too. We were ecstatic as we’ve had a few Skype storytelling sessions with the kids from Central Manor and have enjoyed each and every one of these sessions. I volunteered to conduct one session with the kids and got to skype with the children from second grade. One of our other champions, Nithya Sivashankar, also had the opportunity to Skype with a class of students.
Teresa wrote to us about the storytelling session …
When Pratham Books made an announcement asking for Champions to conduct reading sessions for World
Read Aloud Day, I knew I needed to respond. I contacted Maya at Pratham Books to ask if we, at Central
Manor Elementary school in the United States, could participate.
The answer was yes. Imagine our excitement when Maya offered to Skype with us to conduct a read aloud session for one of our classes. When Maya contacted me asking if another Champion could also Skype with us to read aloud to one of our classes we were ecstatic!
On March 7, 2012, as teachers in classrooms read to their children, two classes had special guest readers from the other side of the earth. A second grade class gathered on the carpet to watch and listen to Maya read aloud, Laxman’s Questions by Lata Mani. Our children loved the book with the beautiful pictures. After hearing the book, Maya so graciously answered a few questions from our children about herself and her country. This session was an enjoyable, educational experience for our children. A child commented, “This was AWESOME!” Maya sent us pictures of one of India’s holidays, Holi, after the Skype session.
In the library we conducted another Skype read aloud session with Nithya, a journalist, and one of Pratham Book’s Champions. This Skype session was with a sixth grade class. Nithya read stories that were not only entertaining but also educational. One child commented, “The stories both taught good lessons and were informative.” After this read aloud Skype session, Nithya sent us pictures and recipes of the foods talked about in one of the stories. We have plans to try to make one of these recipes.
We at Central Manor Elementary school in Pennsylvania, USA would like to thank Pratham Books, Maya, and Nithya for the opportunity of a lifetime!
**********
A day after the storytelling session, Teresa surprised me with a lovely note that Shelly Arment and her class made for me. It totally made by day!
A big thank you to :
Teresa
Reisinger for coordinating this special storytelling session and being a Pratham Books Champion
Reisinger for coordinating this special storytelling session and being a Pratham Books Champion
Shelly Arment and her wonderful class
Shelby Foster for making sure that the sessions went on smoothly
Nithya Sivashankar for being an awesome Champion
Central Manor Elementary School for spreading the joy of reading!
Click here to read the stories sent in by all the Pratham Books Champions.
Note : If any of you want to be a Pratham Books Champion and join us on our journey of getting ‘a book in every child’s hand’, write to us at web(at)prathambooks(dot)org.
