Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 8

Like most days, the number, age and returning children varied. Today, most children

came around 9.10 am.

There were at least four girls today, more than on any other day. The number of boys,

however, was far less. Salim, Khwaja, Karthik, Ruhi, and Sahil are children who are

over 13 years old and are fairly regular. Today, however, Sahil was missing. 

Creating Stories

In order to create a link between yesterday’s engagement to save time,

and have children build on the previous day. Towards this endeavour, since children

were now familiar with the Storyweaver website, I got them to create stories of their

own on the website. The website offers a very convenient layout to create stories.

Children can select an image from the available repository for each slide and then

add text to it. After they finish doing it for one slide, they can easily press the arrow

for the next slide, which allows them to do the same task for another slide.

The website automatically stacks the individual slides together. This helps create a

flow of the story easily. Children who were familiar with the website and

the style of stories, I asked them to create their own stories in their notebooks,

and then we could create them on the website. I was not sure how interested they

would be in this activity. However, to my surprise, many of them began writing and

creating stories of their own.

    Children like Salim, however, continued to ask for spellings, translation of words,

and sentences from Dakhini and Arabic to Hindi and then English. Even if I suggested

that they could write in any language, children insisted on writing in English. I think

this may be because of my own language limitations and the children’s intention to

share their stories with me.

    The following are the stories children created on the Storyweaver website. I only

provided technical assistance for the website and a few grammatical corrections.

In some cases, I let children mix languages and scripts and did not correct their

language so that it reflects children’s own idiolect and expression. Some children

wrote together, like Ruhi and Sara. Others, like Khwaja and Momin, wrote

individual stories. Find children’s stories in the images below.

Khwaja, 14-years, story: I will go to the moon. 

Momin, 10 years, story: Hide and seek

Momin supplemented some of his sentences in the Dakhini language. I added a translation. 

Some of the stories, like Momin's, resembled stories already available on the website. Momin added different objects, language and names of his friends to create his own version of the story. 

Ruhi and Sara, 14 years, story: My Family

Ruhi and Sara worked together to create the above story, which was completely original. The story highlights how Akshara helped her family out by saving money in hard times. In the neighbourhood, stories of hardship among families are very common, and the story reflects that reality. I helped type the last few slides of the story on the website to save time. 

Shweta and Sarika, 10 and 12 years old, wrote the following story:

This incomplete story resembled an available story on the website. The two girls took their time to author the story on the website, selecting images and slowly writing the text. Given the limited time, they could not finish it. They also mentioned that they will create a new story at home and bring it. The girls, like many other children, wanted to create a perfect story. 

    Salim also wrote a story inspired by the one he had heard from his father, who was a religious head at the local mosque. However, he promised to come early the next day to finish writing it on the website. Unfortunately, the limited number of devices meant that children had to wait before their stories could be digitised. Often, the waiting meant that children got bored, and I had to continue to think on my feet to keep them engaged. I used this time to teach them origami animals, asked others to play the games I had earlier taught them in the next classroom or others like Karthik, who chose to read books I had brought into the classroom. Nevertheless, the diversity of children and limited resources meant additional pressures to keep children engaged and plan for simultaneous activities.

We ended the day with a few games, and I promised to print the stories, children had created for them to share with their families. 

Note: All names are pseudonyms