Reading workshops at Broadway Book Centre and Hamara School at Panjim

Book Reading workshops were held by GW member Jugneeta Sudan at Broadway Book Center, Panjim on 13th September 2016 and 3rd February 2017. Here's a report from Jugneeta:

I undertook book readings with children of Hamara School. St Inez. The first session was held in fall, 2016. The centenary celebrations of the beloved author Roald Dahl were in full swing last year all around the world. I took the opportunity to take these children on a journey with the children's fiction of Roald Dahl. The reading was held in Broadway Book Center. The workshop entailed a power point presentation, book readings and follow up activity. Mr Khalil Ahmed, the proprietor of Broadway, kindly made the complete book set available to us for use during the reading. Mrs Wagle, the founder of Hamara School, and her teachers too joined the two-hour reading session. The school purchased books, and on behalf of Goa Writers I too bought a set of six books and presented it to the school. 

The second reading was held in spring, 2017. This time we gathered at the Hamara school premises in Panjim. In the intervening period, at least 7-8 children of the original 25 had read two or more titles of the Roald Dahl set, now available to them in their school library. We first had a discussion of their personal experience with the writings of the author. Then we moved on to the Scholastic publication of the Geronimo Stilton adventures (originally in Italian), that a donor had presented to the school. 

We tried working around various connotations of words colourfully highlighted in the storybooks. The children were absolutely delighted with this exercise. 'Black Beauty' and 'Heidi', the children's classics came next. We went over a context and synopsis of the two books. They have promised to read them (specially Gayatri, Divya, Diksha, Gloria and Salim) before our next reading together. 

It was a very rewarding experience for me. Thank you GW!

- Jugneeta Sudan

This was one of a series of ten workshops held by Goa Writers' members, funded by the sales proceeds of the Inside Out anthology.