Storytelling Saturday

Empowering Futures: Building Foundational Literacy and Social Emotional Skills through Storytelling

25% of Indian students aged 14-18 struggle to read class 2 level texts in their local languages. Creative play-based pedagogies have proven to be effective in improving learning outcomes. Our Storytelling Saturday program fosters literacy and social-emotional skills through read-aloud storytelling in local languages.

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Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2023

Established

3.57K

Children

1

Countries

Target group

Students basic

Updated

May 2024

We aim to bridge the learning gap in rural India and enhance Foundational literacy, and Social Emotional Learning skills. Additionally, we envision kids picking up books with enthusiasm and reading them with comprehension.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

The gap in learning outcomes in rural India as measured by nationwide annual status of education reports, point towards a lack of foundational literacy in kids. This foundational learning crisis impedes cognitive readiness and future skill development. Embracing alternative, play-based pedagogy's global success, our intervention, Storytelling Saturday, aims to transform early-years education.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Our innovation unfolds through a 32-session curriculum aligned with the National Curriculum Framework India (2005) and National Education Policy India 2020, focusing on Foundational Literacy and Social Emotional Learning.

We partner with low budget private schools and government schools in rural Karnataka and rural Andhra. We cater to classes LKG to 3rd and assign one volunteer educator for each of the class in partner school.

Trained volunteer educators visit designated schools every Saturday, implementing a hour long, well-structured session plan. Activities include ice-breakers, story read-aloud sessions, and pre/post-story discussions to ignite curiosity and creativity. Educators, guided by the Program team engage learners in activities mapped to reading, listening, speaking, writing, and SEL components. This dynamic approach aims to enhance foundational skills in a systematic and engaging manner

How has it been spreading?

In 2022-23, the program started with mission to inculcate joy of reading and we impacted 1000 children across 7 schools. Expanding our reach and scope in 2023-24 we reworked our curriculum to connect storytelling with building foundational literacy and social emotional skills. In 2023-24 the innovation in its current form impacted 3600 students in 29 schools in Raichur and Yemmiganur districts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh respectively. Our growth continues as we plan to forge partnerships with new schools in these districts, while also piloting our initiative in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. We would also try to foster partnership with the government at district level so that we can impact all the government schools in a district.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

IndiVillage Foundation offers knowledge-sharing partnerships to those interested in implementing Storytelling Saturday, providing essential training support for educators to execute session plans effectively.

Media

Storytelling session in action!

Implementation steps

Curriculum Review

First step would entail reviewing our 32 session curriculum covering specific Foundational literacy and Social Emotional Learning skills.
It might also include translating the stories in the local language depending on the language needs.

School partnerships

Second step would involve forging partnerships with low budget private schools and government schools with low learning outcomes.

Training the Educators

Next step is to train the educators on the individual session plans ensuring that the learning objective and outcomes are clearly communicated and understood. If need be the educators may also be trained on art of theatre and storytelling to ensure that the storytelling session is delivered effectively.

Ensuring Logistics

Our session plans include a set of 19 storybooks, worksheets and activity decks for the successful conduct of storytelling sessions. Ensuring all the logistics beforehand is a necessary prerequisite.

Baseline Assessment

We have meticulously designed assessments based on widely accepted standards for measuring age appropriate foundational literacy skills.
Before starting the sessions, conducting a baseline assessment of all the participants is desirable.

Weekly sessions

Once the baseline assessments are done, executing the session plans on a weekly basis would be the next step. In this step the trained educators would visit the schools assigned to them and conduct an hour long session with the kids.

Endline Assessment

Once all the session plans have been executed, conduct an endline assessment following the same questionnaire to record the change in students' learning outcomes.