Connecting the Dots Between Literacy and Reading – Libraries’ Critical Role in Children’s Learning

Within our programs, we consider being a thinking learner as having the ability to think independently. This includes the capacity to make sense of what one sees, hears or reads.

A thinking learner is also able to confidently articulate and express ideas, thoughts, feelings and opinions clearly through spoken, pictorial or written communication.

Children need to understand that words represent objects, places, people and a lot more. They also need to fathom that language grows through this process of symbolic representation. They must also get practice in writing as another mode of representing ideas, thoughts and feelings, etc.

Reading, Writing, Stories and Children’s Inner Worlds

During the early years of our journey, we conducted a study. It involved 150 children in Grade 2. Only two children responded that they wanted to read and write to communicate with their friends.

All the other children in the study linked reading and writing with school and getting marks. Alternatively they associated them with obtaining ‘good jobs’.

From this, it must be evident as to why we need to emphasize the links between reading and writing with talking. In the words of James Britton, “ Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.”

Why is Literacy Important? Where Do Libraries Fit In?

A child’s inner world is full of stories. Children experience the world in the form of stories. Libraries build on this. They help develop relationships between written words, stories and children. They do this in multiple ways.

Libraries help connect reading and writing to children’s inner worlds and experiences. They also enable beginning level readers and writers understand that the alphabet and letters are sound symbols that can be combined to create spoken words.

As a child begins to experience print and the written forms of words, she begins to understand scribbling, drawing and writing as various modes of communicating and expressing. When children make inner connections with written symbols and texts or pictures, it becomes a meaningful and relevant activity for them.

These elements play a critical role in making decoding a meaningful process. They also help establish connections between the spoken and the written forms of language. Words after all are a synthesis of sounds and symbols, which in turn form speech.

Lev Vygotsky says, “Writing is the written form of speech.” But literacy is far more than just ‘akshargyaan’ or ‘knowledge of letters’. And by this we don’t deny the importance of akshargyaan. However, if the experience of a child is absent in the learning process, then it becomes a mechanical and meaningless rote learning activity.

A beginning level reader often struggles to read and understand the printed words in a text. However, young children soon learn to connect and weave stories from pictures. They then gradually link the pictures to the text next to it.

Literacy or Stories? Which Comes First?

Children often do pretend reading. This is an important stage at which they realize that written words carry meaning. We all have faced this issue when introducing a text to a child. At times, we have felt that perhaps it is important to work on literacy first and then introduce texts and stories to children. However, this also increases the chances of missing out the stories.

Through our journey at Organization for Early Literacy Promotion (OELP), we believe both should go hand in hand. Both are important. A well-researched and exciting way of addressing this challenge is through read alouds.

Through read aloud sessions, children learn to engage with the structures and forms of written language. They are also enticed into the world of books and begin to want to read.

Our day begins with conversations with the child and read alouds. A good read aloud draws the child to the book and the world of reading. We practice three stages for a read aloud: pre, during and post reading. Each stage is important.

Many school teachers we work with have raised questions about the way we facilitate read alouds. They ask, why do we bring books, if children are not able to read? It has taken us a while to share and demonstrate that literacy is not just about reading and writing.

More importantly, it is about making meaning through written words. talking, listening, discussing, reflecting, drawing, etc. All these are integral parts of this process.

In OELP, we use the Four Blocks Framework for building the foundations of literacy.

This framework allows dedicated time for read alouds, book talks and conversations, followed by building vocabulary, writing and expressing, and finally learning the script in meaningful ways. We try to create games and interesting activities to engage the children. Most of these are based on DIY, low-cost materials.

People ask, “What comes first for you – reading or literacy?” I would like to quote Jim Trelease from his ‘Read Aloud Handbook’ here. In this book he mentions, “It is not just important for a child to learn HOW to read but equally important for a child to WANT to read.”

I just wish if we could break barriers between libraries and classrooms. OELP tries to do this by bringing books and libraries into the classroom. We strongly believe that engagement with books and written texts, and literacy learning, go hand in hand. These are processes that strengthen each other.

Marginalization, Literacy and Children’s Sense of Self and Belonging

We need to also understand that the world is not an equal space. What are the challenges for children growing within low literate communities?

Many children from marginalized castes come with poor self-esteem. They often arrive in classrooms with their own challenges and fears. The structured spaces of schools are an unfamiliar environment for them.

It is vital to make them feel a sense of belonging and acceptance. That needs to be the starting point. It is only when they are socially and emotionally comfortable that they begin to engage, absorb and make sense of what they see and hear in their classroom and its surroundings.

It is important to allow children to bring their real world experiences into the classroom. I remember a conversation in Grade 1 around a Tulika book, ‘Gola ka Ghar’. As the conversation progressed to different types of homes, the children brought out the difference between ‘a ghar’ and ‘a makaan’. They claimed that they lived in ‘ghars,’ while their teacher and other ‘bade log’ lived in makaans. Even at this young age, this group of children were aware of their place in society, and the fact that they did not live in ‘makaans’.

We believe that there is perhaps a missing link in NEP 2020. In OELP, we believe that foundational learning should precede foundational literacy. It is important to build each child’s sense of self and belonging. We have found it necessary to inculcate this sense among children that they matter. This is essential if we want them to engage meaningfully with the process of learning.

Work done at Harvard Centre for the Developing Child has established that children need to feel safe and secure for learning to begin. Our education system often misses out on the ‘sense of self’.

This is why practices like beginning with activities based on children’s names works well in engaging beginning level children in classrooms. Such activities provide children with a sense of acceptance. These also make learning meaningful and fun.

Challenges of Working at the Interface between Libraries and Literacy

Having meaningful and engaging conversations has been a huge challenge for teachers in rural government schools where we work. We believe that conversation is significant for learning to happen. This goes both ways, where we talk to children as well as listen to them.

Conversations that happen in the classroom are often very shallow and mechanical. As a culture, we don’t seem talk to/with children. Instead, most often we talk down to them. This is an area in which we have really struggled. We need to demonstrate and model engaging conversations. We also must build teachers’ capacities on having meaningful and interesting conversations in classrooms. Videos of good conversations may be shown to teachers during their training.

When we talk about promoting reading among children, just giving books is not enough. This needs to be followed up with activities like buddy reading, word games, literacy games and discussions. All these are essential, so that we can use good children’s literature to nudge questions, provoke thinking and spark dialogues.

Creating a Culture of Reading

As part of the efforts to build a culture of reading amongst children and the larger communities through libraries, OELP has taken two approaches. We discuss them below.

Potli Baba: Children go to the chaupaal with a bundle of books and read out stories to the elderly. Older people love children’s books. They are extremely happy when children read out stories to them. They narrate stories to children, which they in turn write down and share in the library.

Kahani Melas: These are festive day events planned in government schools. During these melas, many activities related to books are undertaken by the children, their parents and community members. Teachers and parents are also involved in this process. All this helps to build a buzz around books. Children feel excited and enthusiastic as the ownership of the event is taken by them.

During summer vacations, we have at times worked on such book based kahani melas over a period 6–8 weeks. During this period, activities around story books are conducted periodically in the villages.

During these melas, children listen to stories from the elderly. They also collect local knowledge. They get to know about their villages’ histories as well. This helps them discover their own village and their people in a deeper way. All these activities culminate in a grand ‘Kahani Mela’ which brings all the book-based experiences together.

When children borrow books from our libraries and take them to their homes, they often come with demands that their mother has asked for a particular kind of book. Stories not only reach out to children but to the larger families as well.

The OELP team records the journey of the book and all those who have read the book. Many a times, these have triggered children to relate the story to their own contexts. For example, in their urge to know the history of their village, a group of children recently developed stories of monuments in and around their village. To give another example, a village map that was developed six years ago is now being redone, as children felt that a lot of local landscape has changed. So, history is not something carved on stones. It is what we create.

Through our experience, we have realized that the interest in reading and books is immense. The organization is now trying to involve adolescent girls to take leadership in the library program. There is a larger role of parents, schools and CSOs to ensure a child’s learning journey. Parents’ response, especially in low literate communities, is very high when they see their children read and write. I remember little Ganga. Her parents were not very supportive of their daughter’s education. However, one day when she wrote their name on the soil with a stick, they were completely speachless. They were so touched by seeing this. They could not believe that their little girl had learnt to read and write.

Now Ganga’s father is the one who persuades other parents in the village to send their children to school. These examples have often encouraged the larger sections of these communities to send their children to schools.

We also try creative ways of involving parents. Sometimes children amaze you with their gestures, like making invitation cards for their parents to ensure their attendance to PTA meetings.

When it comes to reading, literacy and learning, there are many grey areas. There are no definite answers. It is not so easy to give primacy to one over the other. However, one thing is certain. There is a strong mutual connect between literacy and reading. Libraries play a very crucial role in strengthening this connect.