Reading is one of the most cherished activity a child does as part of growing up. Beyond improving the vocabulary, reading can increase knowledge, improve imagination or just be a joyous activity to engage in.
One of the goals of our MDLS program is to setup child friendly libraries in every Government school we work with and equip it with books that kids would love to read!
Improving the ability to read is not only important for language development and but also important to understand
what you read in other subjects. Our key focus here is to reuse existing school libraries and structure them using our process and compliment by adding additional books.
While just making books available to children in itself is a good first step to inculcate reading habits, a well-structured, activity based learning program can go a long way. Hippo Campus reading foundation has developed one such reading program, which we implement in all schools as part of our MDLS program. The program, called GROW BY Reading, starts by colour coding all the books in the library using six colours, Green to Yellow (GROW BY- Green Red Orange White Blue Yellow).
Children are first assessed on their reading levels and mapped to one of the colors. The children are then encouraged to pick books from their level. This way, the child always picks books that the child is capable of reading and understanding and hence developing the interest to read without getting discouraged. Once a quarter or once every 6 months, the child is assessed again and if the child is able to read fluently in its current level, he/she is moved to the next level.
Through child friendly books and a structured framework and monitoring process, our library programs bring the joy of reading to the classroom and help improve reading in native and English language.
