'Let us read' project a success in taluka schools

AURANGABAD: A project implemented by the Block Education Officer (BEO) of Aurangabad to help students develop reading skills and interest in reading has proven successful.
The BEO has also taken up steps to train teachers by appealing them to develop experimental models that will help students to understand better.
About 26,000 students and all teachers in the taluka have been involved in the project for the last three months which started in January.
Priyarani Patil, BEO at Aurangabad taluka, here said that the initiative called 'Chala Vachu Ya' (Let us read) was started in January earlier this year.
"Students are made to read comics, story books, poetry and introduced to general reading material on first Saturday of every month," Patil said.
The activity is carried out once a week for four hours, she added. The activity is carried out for primary school children from Class III to Class VII in Zilla Parishad schools.
Patil said that students are also given the liberty to sit and read at any place in the school premises as they desire.
Furthermore, the students are asked to give presentation of the book that they have read during the past week.
"At the next Saturday session, the students have to give presentation before their classmates telling them what they learnt. This way the student develops confidence and also overcomes stage fright," Patil said.
Patil said that students are more aware of the happenings and also apply logic that they read in many books to their lives.
Teachers also involved in quality development
Not only students, but teachers are also being involved to develop teaching methods for students. Patil said that a Teacher Quality Development Programme has been initiated where teachers are also asked to read books, charts and other material.
They are also asked to prepare charts, working models of experiments or display models.
"The activity is held on the third Saturday of every month where teachers discuss what kind of teaching methods can be used to make teaching and understanding of students effective," Patil said.
Principals of ZP schools, social experts and guest lecturers are also called to discuss and debate teaching methods.
"This helps to develop interest among teachers. Suggestions are also made to give extra inputs that will make a particular subject easy to understand," Patil said.