Foundational Literacy

In ‘The Power of Open’ Purvi Shah shows how Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver platform is trying to create access to quality storybooks for children, that too at scale. Kushal Dattani, in his highly relevant article, discusses about various relevant aspects related to learning disability and early literacy.

The ‘Ground Zero’ piece for this issue of the journal shares the experiences of three organizations from across India who are working in the space of early literacy with very different approaches.

In a free-wheeling conversation, Jane Sahi shares from four decades of her experiences of working with children and adults on language learning; she shows how recovering dignity for home languages, a sense of play, and self-expression, must all be a part of any intervention in foundational literacy.

Manimakalai Raja, in the essay ‘Nali Kali: Engaging Every Child in Learning,’ shares the learnings from interventions in multi-grade, multi-level classes in government schools that primarily cater to migrant children; this piece shows how it is possible to work with the government to make a real difference into children’s learning education processes, especially those related to language learning.

In ‘Mindful Learning,’ A K Jalaluddin and Arpan Mitra argue that literacy programs for children must try and build higher learning competencies and focus on context-specific solutions.

In ‘Learning to Read is Reading to Learn’ Shailaja Menon provides a brief history of the key ideas in early literacy education in India.