In early November, I conducted a reading session with students of grade 4 at
the Intaya Public School in Arunachal Pradesh in the north-eastern part of
India. An audio-visual version of my book called the ‘First House’ was shown to
the children. The story is a folktale of the Singpho tribe that describes how the
first house was built in a faraway land with the cooperation of forest creatures.
The folktale was first narrated and then by showing the BookBox animation
film, five strategies were used to improve comprehension and literacy and
here are they!
- The audio was muted so that students could retell the story in their own words by watching the ‘silent’ film.
- The running text was hidden and students were asked to write down parts of the story just by listening to the narration.
- The film was stopped mid-way and students had to imagine and then narrate the rest of the story in English or in their mother tongue.
- The film was frozen at particular points and students noted down names of things they saw in the picture.
- The cursor was fixed on a particular word of the text to help students notice spellings and pronunciation of unfamiliar words.
